ZA Cheeks Groovy 05 June Bride Swatches & Review

Provided for review

Hey lovelies,

Another treasure from ZA today! I am really enjoying delving further into their makeup line and hope you are enjoying seeing more of the brand too. I'm eyeing up some of the eyeshadow palettes next, which look to have similar complexity and colour combinations to high-end Japanese brands I've been lusting after like Suqqu and Shiseido's Maquillage line.

The closest ZA stand to me is often woefully understocked and bereft of new releases so you can imagine my delight when I came across a gold-shimmered ivory highlighter at a ZA stand chock-full of goodies while visiting my hometown a wee while ago. Unfortunately, this was one of the few things they were out of stock of, so I walked away empty-handed, mournfully admiring the swatch on my hand.

The following week, I was chatting excitedly to ZA's super lovely marketing assistant, Kate, about all that I had seen and swatched, along with my upcoming wedding. The highlighter came up and Kate revealed it was called June Bride, a funny coincidence that led to her very sweetly gifting it to me as a wedding present. Thank you, Kate!

Although it's part of the Cheeks Groovy line of blushes, June Bride is quite clearly intended as a highlighter, with a diagram on the packaging showing suggested application. I guess I am quite used to brands clearly splitting products into categories - blush, highlighter, bronzer, contouring powder - and labelling them as such (even though in many cases you can use a product however you please), so I was kind of surprised that ZA didn't call this a highlighter explicitly. No beef there though, just an observation.

Inside the compact you'll find a small brush for applying the highlighter with. I did play around with this brush and found it a bit too dense for the kind of diffused highlight I prefer and sort of... floppy? Let me explain. I'd apply highlighter to the top of my cheekbones, and the density of the brush would cause it to apply in quite a thick stripe, but when I'd try to blend it out, the bristles would flop everywhere and not really blend much at all. I had more success using the side of the brush to very lightly run the product along my cheeks and then build gradually, so it's not useless, but I much prefer to reach other brushes.

June Bride is ivory with gold shimmer, giving it a rather yellow tone overall in the pan. On skin though, it's more subtle than you'd think, providing a really buildable natural glow. The texture is very fine and smooth, blending beautifully into the skin without looking powdery at all. I was somewhat disappointed by the wear time though, as I found it had mostly faded away after five hours when I usually get seven or eight hours out of most highlighting products.

June Bride makes a wonderful brow bone and inner corner highlight and lasted eight hours (over primer) when I wore it that way. The colour really reminds me of MAC Vanilla pigment, just with sheerer colour pay off, so if you love Vanilla but find it too intense June Bride could be just the thing you're looking for.