L'Oreal: Paradise Extatic Mascara

Sofia Haziran 27, 2021

An article came up on my twitter feed the other day entitled, Is Mascara Losing It's Relevance? Initially when I read this title I wanted to stand up for mascara and say I wasn't doing a year long trial of mascaras for nothing but then I realised, why is it that I feel the need to trial mascara? and why have I always felt so let down by the vast amount of mascaras which do not work for me? After this realisation, I could fully understand why the writer would suggest such an odd concept that I had never really thought about. However even though I have tested some truly awful mascaras this year, mascara is still a staple in my beauty bag and it easily makes the biggest difference to my look. Whenever someone asks what the one makeup item I couldn't live without is, I always say mascara.

In so many ways I agree with what the writer was saying, people now prefer lash lifts and extensions as it is less effort so in that respect mascara has lost some of its relevance but to use the fact that new brands are not selling mascara seems a bit unfair to me, the tagline for the article is as follows. 'Buzzy brands like Fenty Beauty, Kylie Cosmetics and Anastasia Beverly Hills don't sell mascara.' No they don't, quite correct however they don't sell a lot of products. Fenty and Kylie do not have specific brow products either, does that make brow products less relevant? All of these brands are relatively new and their aim is to sell successful products, mascara is a risky launch. People either love it or hate it and that is something that has been shown throughout the series I am doing, mascara is hard to get right.

One brand who have nailed mascara is L'Oreal. For the longest time I used the L'Oreal Miss Baby Roll Mascara as it was everything I wanted in a mascara. The latest mascara I have been testing is the Paradise Extatic Mascara and I have to say it lives up to it's reputation and possibly exceeds it. Prior to me testing this mascara, I actually recommended it to a friend thinking that it would give quite natural looking lashes, I was wrong! There in fact is nothing overly natural about the way your lashes look after using this at all! After my friend told me this, I decided I would try it out myself and see if I got on with it better than her.

The reason I thought this would be quite natural was because of the sample wand they had displayed in Boots, it seemed quite separated and wirey which I thought would allow you to separate the lashes and not make them too chunky but it has the opposite effect. This wand does separate your lashes but it also gives a shit ton of volume. I much prefer more brissle based wands compared to some of the plastic wands I have tested as of late which I did not get on with at all. Using this L'Oreal mascara has confirmed this for me.

The shape of the wand actually reminds me of the Too Faced Better Than Sex wand but the L'Oreal mascara has a slightly less hourglass shape. I actually think that is part of what makes this wand more successful, I really struggled to use the Too Faced mascara as it is intended and just ended up using the very tip of the wand instead. Admittedly my problem with the Too Faced mascara was not exclusively a problem with the brush but more to do with the formula.

Not only does this mascara give my lashes volume for days but it does everything I want a mascara to do; it gives length and separation but allows my lashes to live their clumpy fantasy. I find the look of my lashes, once I've used this mascara, is very similar to the L'Oreal Miss Baby Roll which was my mascara obsession last year. It is possible to create a more natural look; if you just do one coat of this mascara. The more you build up the Paradise Extatic Mascara, the clumpier it gets. Personally I love a clumpy lash so I will do 3-4 coats to get my desired finish. Not only can I get the big, bold lashes that I love but it is jet black so my lashes look even more prominent. There is nothing worse than a less than jet black mascara which doesn't do much for your lashes.

As with any mascara the main quality I look for is how much it smudges. In an ideal world no mascara would smudge on me but that just doesn't seem to happen. I have quite oily/watery eyes so nothing seems to stick. I am pretty sure I can count the number of mascaras that have worked for me on one hand but now I can add the L'Oreal Paradise Extatic mascara to the list. Much like the L'Oreal Miss Baby Roll, on some days I get smudging, it is only minimal and on the outer corner of my bottom lashes so sometimes I can pass it for messy liner. Even so, the minimal amount of smudging is pretty good for my eyes.

I had high expectations of this mascara as I had seen every blogger rave about it and the Miss Baby Roll really impressed me last year and I expected this to do the same. Luckily I was not disappointed. This was actually my first venture into drugstore mascara this year and it is easily one of my favourites that I have tried this year. I'm not sure this mascara has successfully competed with the IT Cosmetics Superhero Mascara but I guess you can find out in my end of year round up.

With the success of this mascara, it has shown me how much a good mascara can affect a look. Having used so many bad mascaras this year, my eyes haven't been looking as big and bold as I like them to look. With the struggle of finding a good mascara I can understand why people turn to extensions and tints but I think finding a good mascara redeems the product. In a way I agree, mascara might not be as relevant as it used to be but you just have to look at the massive mascara launches that have happened this year to realise it is firmly a big part of the beauty industry. Benefit did a massive influencer holiday for the launch of Badgal Bang and Nars had a similarly massive launch in Ibiza for the Climax Mascara. When you see these launches it is hard to believe that mascara is losing its place within our beauty bags. Whether or not mascara has a place on all beauty brands shelves is yet to be seen but one thing is for certain, it will always have a place in my makeup bag.

As we are now in September, I will probably only try 3 more mascaras this year. Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @SophaaRambles if there are any mascaras you recommend.

P.s. Here is a link to the article I was referring to throughout the post, it was on Business of Fashion: Is Mascara Losing It's Relevance?

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