Guerlain Terra Ora Sculpting Powder Contrast Highlighter

The star of Guerlain's Summer 2013 Collection comes in a real wooden case. The name and the signature of Guerlain are carved by golden letters, fitting to how it is called, Terra Ora. 

To open it, one has to twist the upper part gently so that three small magnets holding upper and lower part together loosens to reveal one of the most breathtaking powders I have seen this season.

This post is forcing me to put thousands of photos, showing how excited I am about the design of Terra Ora Compact. It reminds me how badly we got used to plastic packaging and forgot how such a neutral design can be so appealing and effortlessly chic. The upper part hosts a mirror for the touch ups on the go and the powder.... *happy sigh*...

The sun is chained down in this powder and the big G must be indicating that this can only be done by Guerlain. Look closely at how elegantly each chain gets separated from the anothers as the circumference increases and tell me this is not a work of art...

Alright, after everyone heard enough about how I will probably never be able to use this beauty by fear of loosing the design, I still owe you a review, so here it goes. After I ran my fingers on the extremely finely milled surface of this out-of-earth bronzer/highlighter, its golden and peachy shades reminded me of Armani's Face&Eye Compact, which was reviewed here. So I took it out to shoot some comparison photos.

Top tier of Armani's palette which is a highlighter/bronzer is similar to the outer ring of Guerlain's Terra Ora. Armani is just a tad more orange and Guerlain is leaning slightly more red. The inner Ring of Terra Ora is a gorgeous golden shade which is rather satin than shimmery. This compact does not have a matte shade. I think a slightly darker matte shade would make it much more versatile, nevertheless it does work wonders as highlighter on me. But before we come to that, I would like to point out that once inner and outer shades are mixed, the result comes close to the peachy eye shadow shade at lower tier of Armani's palette. As one would expect, Terra Ora is sheerer than Armani's eye shadows though so to get the same effect (such as the swatches below) one has to swipe eye shadow of Armani once and Terra Ora several times. 

I applied Terra Ora combined with Guerlain's Fard Metal loose powder in Cuivre Ora on eyes, reviewed here. Terra Ora gives a subtle from within glow, not over the top but surely noticeable. For the photos below I used it alone. Combining it with a Terracotta bronzer, ( shade 03 reviewed here), also gives good results since those are matte. I found the outer ring of Terra Ora to be too light for my NC 20-25 skin for contouring, thus for me it is a highlighter and contributes to sculpting in only this way. If you are very pale, having NC10ish skin, the outer ring may show up more and can really used for sculpting but even then I would recommend combining it with a matte bronzer for the best effect. As you can see in the photos below, the powder does accentuate my cheek bone by highlighting the upper part, even when used alone. Unfortunately I have to report that it also highlights some of the pores slightly, even though ( I was thinking that) I don't have many, check out around the nose...

Final thoughts: This must be one of the prettiest designs I came across this season. It is quiet expensive too so it has to be mentioned that it doesn't provide much versatility starting from light medium (NC20-25) complexions. It is a gorgeous highlighter though, so if you already got your Terra Cotta and if you want to add some oomph to that for special occasions, it is a product that you can consider investing for. Terra Ora is limited edition, contains 16 g / .56 OZ and retails for 57 EUR / 72$. 

What do you think about Terra Ora? Worth the splurge or just an expensive adventure?