Love it: the Āether Beauty Crystal Grid Gemstone Eyeshadow Palette

You may be familiar with sustainable beauty brand Āether Beauty’s Rose Quartz palette from Instagram and beyond - their first ever zero-waste eyeshadow palette that was almost too gorgeous to use. Now they have dropped a highly anticipated sequel to it in the form of the Crystal Grid Gemstone Palette, which is made up of twelve cosmic-inspired shades in shimmer and metallic finishes that just may be your new go-to for the winter months.

Āether founder, Tiila Abbitt created a unique concept in sustainable beauty when she launched the brand just over a year ago, and she comes with some serious pedigree. A passionate, highly creative product development professional with 11+ years' experience, Tiila has a BFA in sculpture and an MFA in fashion design. She worked in the fashion industry for over five years before transitioning to beauty, spending the next seven years of her professional life at Sephora in charge of product development for makeup collaborations and accessories. Her obsession with sustainability lead her to become the lead R+D for sustainable materials while also being on the sustainability leadership council for the retailer. She quickly learned that in the USA, there are only 11 banned chemicals in colour cosmetics while in the European Union, there are over 1300. Because of this, she learned how to formulate colour cosmetics with a very large chemical ban list and how to substitute for cleaner alternatives. Her creations are seriously high performance as well as seriously clean, which is no mean feat.

But back to the new Crystal Grid Gemstone Eyeshadow Palette, which truly impresses. Each of the crystal-charged pigments that create the shadows in the palette are infused with diamond, amber, sapphire, topaz, amethyst, and tourmaline to illuminate the skin with their light-reflective properties. They are also formulated with coconut oil and shea butter to create a super smooth, almost-buttery texture for one swipe application, and the palette is sustainably packaged. After removing the eyeshadow pans and elastic, the paper palette is fully recyclable and zero-waste - the first of its kind in the industry.
The full shade line up in the palette is:

Diamond – Sand shimmer, infused with diamond
Vibration – Taupe metallic, infused with topaz
Amber – Golden sunset metallic, infused with amber
Energy – Rust metallic, infused with amber
Amethyst – Violet shimmer, infused with amethyst
Sapphire – Teal shimmer, infused with sapphire
Intuition – Saddle brown shimmer infused with topaz
Tourmaline – Rust red to emerald green duo-chrome, infused with tourmaline
Moonlight – White silver metallic, infused with diamond
Recharge – Charcoal gray metallic, infused with topaz
Topaz – Antique gold metallic, infused with topaz
Manifest – Bronze shimmer, infused with topaz

The sheer breadth of the shade range means that the palette is huge fun to play with, and it’s also pretty damn handy for travel too. The colour payoff is huge so a little goes a long way, and the lustre shimmers without looking at all glittery, so its elegant as well as cute as a button.

Oh and last but by no means least, 10 per cent of proceeds from the sale of this baby go to The Rainforest Foundation, which works on-the-ground to secure land rights for indigenous people. They strengthen indigenous land security and train indigenous communities to use technology to protect their forests. Pretty cool.

The Āether Beauty Crystal Grid Gemstone Eyeshadow Palette is available right now from the amazing, New Zealand-based Clean Beauty Collective. Click here to get one now.