A great big sigh of beauty adoration, please, for this Dior Transat eyeshadow palette. Just look at the accent colour in the centre! The richest, most vibrant coppery orange. If you have blue eyes, then this shade is your new best friend; it actually looks great against any eye colour (I’ve been doing some online stalking!) but does simply wonderful things against blue. For once, it’s an unconventional shade that actually excites me, rather than making me want to run for the mountains. I won’t insult your intelligence and try to tell you that it’s the easiest shade to wear – it’s by no means foolproof – but if you get it right? It’s everything you could possibly want from a summer shade. It helps, I think, that the rest of the shades in the palette are so wearable – golden sand colours with a rich, chocolatey powder for accenting and defining.

In the photograph above, I’ve just quickly dabbed some of the metallic orange shade beneath my lower lashline and smudged it in with my fingertip. Do you see what I mean about the blue eyes thing? It’s quite miraculous! If you didn’t want to go quite so bold with the orange then you can easily mix it up with the shade on the bottom left:

It just tempers it down a little if you’re worried that the orange is a bit too obvious; but personally I think that the orange is an incredible colour to flash across the eyes. Even better, I’d imagine, with more bronzed-up skin and some expert contouring under the cheekbones and a slick of something nude-y and glossy on the lips… Maybe I’ll try that as the weather hots up!

In the second photograph, I had put together a very basic bit of eye contouring with the sandy shades in the palette and then washed over the orange shade really lightly with a loose, feathery eyeshadow brush. It cast an amazing metallic warmth over my eyelids – much warmer than a gold shade would have done, and lighter and fresher than a bronze. I’m not sure how well you can see it in the photograph, but it just gives this modern, unusual “kick” to the eye makeup. Very subtle, but very flattering. Clever shade, that orange, and a clever choice of complementary tones too. Grab this one while you can, it’s limited edition!

The Dior Transat Palette in Sundeck is £41 at John Lewis or £34.85  with free delivery from Escentual.com here.