Sleek Showstoppers Palette: Swatches and Review

Yes it is indeed another Sleek Makeup Palette! I love their palettes, so this is a welcome addition to my growing collection of Sleek palettes! This time, the palette is the Showstoppers Palette, and it is indeed an apt homage to all the stunning palettes the UK-based drugstore brand has put out.


The palette is perhaps one of my favourites so far, in terms of colour selection. While some of the earlier Sleek Makeup palettes tended to be rather one-note (e.g. all brights, all neutrals, or almost all dark shades, and so on), I do think Sleek Makeup has gotten better at curating the colours of the palettes they put out. This is definitely a good palette, with multiple colour bases covered - there's everything from sultry purples to lovely browns, to stormy, smokey blues and greys, and even a couple of rust-inspired reddish brown and coral shades. There are also highlight and lid shades to complete the palette. There aren't any neon shades, so excepting that colour family, I think we're mostly covered here.



Quality-wise, this palette is more of the same, which is not a good thing as far as Sleek Makeup palettes are concerned. The shades are very pigmented, and very soft as well. As usual, the shimmer shades are a softer and more blendable than the matte shades (depending on how soft you like your shadows, you may prefer the shimmer or matte shades more), but here, the ratio of shimmer to mattes is almost half-half. So that's good, right?

Here's a closer look at the palette, along with colour names (listed below the photo):


Top Row, L-R: Paraguaya, Sunset, Me, Myself & Eye, Bad Girl, Noir, Ultramattes V2
Bottom Row, L-R: Oh So Special, Bohemian, Storm, Sparkle, Au Natural, Graphite

Obviously the colour names have been taken from previous palettes - I definitely recognize almost all the names! From what I can tell though, it doesn't look like they just took a colour from each of the named palettes and stuck them together to combine the Showstoppers Palette. Sure there are similar shades, but not everything is the same. For example, the shade "Bohemian" is a light matte coral, which doesn't exist in the original Sleek Bohemian Palette. And there is no matte light grey in the original Sleek Oh So Special palette. Same goes for the shade called Storm - here Storm is a deep matte blue, but in my Sleek Storm Palette swatches, the only similar deep blue in the palette is a shimmer shade. And same goes for the Au Natural shade - there is indeed a deep purple in the Sleek Au Natural Palette, but it's a flate, matte purple, versus the more sparkly shade in the Showstoppers Palette. It seems to me that instead, each shade named reflects the feel of the original palette, but without the Anyway, believe it or not, I don't actually have every single Sleek palette, so these are just the ones I had and looked at.

Anyway, I hoped that cleared up any questions anyone had about the similarity of shades to other existing Sleek palettes. So, without further ado, swatches! And as always, my commentary on the shades (I bet half of you aren't really reading the commentary, but swatching evidently turns me into a rambly old woman):


Paraguaya is a matte light-to-midtone beige. Nice base shade, this one blends in with my NC20 skin colour. I swear I swatched it, and heavily too - you just can't see it because it blended in...
Sunset is a rusty maroon-brown shimmer shade. I think this is one of the rare shades that has a similar colour in the namesake Sleek Sunset Palette. I called the original shade a "Midtoned russet brown (shimmer)", and I could say the same for this, too.
Me, Myself and Eye - aww, boo, one of the Sleek palettes I don't have now. In any case, this is an off-white cream highlight shade that's very shimmery. On me it just looks white, although there's a hint of cream in the pan.
Bad Girl - Yikes, another palette I don't have. Thanks, Sleek, for reminding me that as large as my palette collection is, it's not complete! Anyway, this is a great midtone shimmery olive green shade that also doesn't appear in the original palette (if I recall the original Bad Girl Palette was a bunch of blues). You know I love olive green - it's neutral enough to work on most skintones, and although it's wearable it isn't boring. I think this is my favourite shade in the entire Showstoppers Palette!
Noir is a shimmery gunmetal grey. I don't think Sleek Makeup ever had a Noir Palette. But, they do have a shade called "Noir" in almost all their permanent palettes, and it's a matte black.
Ultramattes V2 - this is just a matte black, which you can also find in the original Ultramattes V2 Palette. Still, every palette needs a good black, right?
Oh So Special is a matte light grey. I'm not a fan of greys, but this is lovely, because it doesn't pull too blue on me. It's a nice neutral sort of grey, very wearble.
Bohemian is a light matte coral-pink shade. Very bohemian, not in the loud sort of way, but in a fresh, springy sort of way.
Storm is a matte deep navy blue. Very stormy indeed. Great in the crease, or used as a liner, even.
Sparkle is a shimmery beige, similar to Paraguaya but with shimmer, and maybe just a hair less pink. This one also blended right into my skin. You can tell I swatched it though - the shimmer is there! :P
Au Natural is a sparkly purple, but the sparkles don't show up too much on my skin. So on me it's a pretty matte deep plummy purple.
Graphite is a gorgeous shimmery deep cool brown. I love it!

(Product was sent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)