Urban Decay: Born to Run Palette Review

I’ve wanted the Born to Run palette since its release last year. The wanderlust design spoke to me on a spiritual level but Born to Run reminded me a lot of the old Vice palettes Urban Decay used to release. I own several of the Vice palettes and I rarely use them. I decided I wouldn’t use Born to Run enough to justify the $64.00 CAD price tag…then it went on sale! The price dropped to $39.00 CAD at Sephora so I decided to indulge my desire to own this travel themed palette. Let’s see how Born to Run performs! 

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Urban Decay describes Born to Run as “For the adventurer, the road warrior or the weekend escapist – no matter where you’re going or what you’re getting up to. Born to Run is the ONLY palette you need to pack…and never look back. The palette features of-the-moment shades ranging from jewel tones and modern neutrals to more colourful shadows”. 

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Shades

I’m not going to do a shade by shade review of each colour because there’s just too many shadows in this palette. I decided to highlight my favourite shades from each of the three rows to make things more manageable.

Row 1 – Breakaway, Stranded, Blaze, Weekender, Still Shot, Riff, Good as Gone

The top row is neutral. The mattes are fantastic! Particularly, Riff and Good as Gone. All the shades in the top row performed well. Though, the four lighter shades muddle  together a bit because they’re so similar. 

Row 2 – Hell Ride, Baja, Accelerate, Guilt Trip, Ignite, Smog, Wanderlust

Things get wild in the second row. There’s three red tones, one orange, a purple and a green and UD classic Smog. Accelerate and Ignite are my favourite shades in the row. I’ve been liking reddish tones for awhile now and those two work well together. Baja performs the best of the second row but I rarely wear orange shades. 

Row 3 – Wildheart, Punk, Double Life, Jet, Drift, Radio, Big Sky

This is my favourite row in the palette. Double Life, Drift and Radio are so pigmented and beautiful. I want to make wearing dark, shimmery smokey eyes a daytime thing so I can wear them everyday. Considering how dark the shades in this row are I experienced minimal fallout or creasing. 

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Urban Decay has upper their matte game big time. Born to Run pulled a 180° in terms of what I expect from Urban Decay. I preferred the mattes in this palette over the shimmers (there’s a first time for everything). The mattes blended beautifully, had fantastic pigmentation with minimal fallout. Whatever UD did to their matte formula it worked wonders. The mattes stole the show and left me wishing for more throughout the palette. 

The shimmer shadows weren’t bad, but the shimmer were less consistent overall. Double Life, Drift, Accelerate and Stranded were the standouts for me. These shades had the best pigmentation and applied easiest. The other shimmers are nice but Big Sky and Wild Heart weren’t as pigmented as I expected. The quality of the palette as a whole is phenomenal – the mattes just out perform the shimmer. 

I got great wear time each time I wore this palette. I didn’t notice any fading for 6-7 hours, which is normal for me using UD shadows.  Born to Run contains 21 pans with 0.80g/0.02 oz of product. 

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Packaging

I couldn’t resist this unique packaging. An eyeshadow palette covered in travel photos could not align better with my interests. I’ve visited many of the places pictured on Born to Run, so it’s sort of like UD made a collage of my travel photos and put it on a palette. The layout of the photos covering the outer packaging is gorgeous and well balanced. The spine of the palette has “you’re not lost, you’re born to run” embossed on it (a tiny bit corny but still a nice detail). 

Born to Run is a large, heavy palette. The packaging feels high quality and sturdy but it weighs more than other palettes I own that are a similar size. The palette also has a massive mirror on the inside with “born to run” written in the bottom right corner. Born to Run was designed with travel in mind but I likely wouldn’t travel with it because of how big it. Overall, Born to Run grabs my attention so I’m hoping I’ll get lots of use out of it at home. 

Thoughts

I love the branding of this palette. The whole Born to Run collection is lovely but the shade selection is basically a Vice palette. My biggest hesitation before picking up this palette was how much it reminded me of my Vice palettes. I’m overwhelmed by the colours and crazy shade counts in my Vice palettes so I rarely wear them. Initially, I got the same feeling from Born to Run. But…upon closer inspection, the palette is very well organized. It’s easy to see looks and pair shades together effortlessly. 

Though, I can easily see shadows combinations there aren’t many neutral shades in this palette. The top row has the most neutral shades but Breakaway, Stranded, Blaze and Weekender are too similar to be together in one palette in my opinion. So, when UD describes this as a travel friendly palette, I wouldn’t agree but it is a fun palette. 

Like a lot of Urban Decay palettes there’s repeated shadows. If you own several Urban Decay palettes you’ll notice there are shades like Smog that UD likes to include in every second palette the brand releases. I wish UD wouldn’t repeat shades so much but the formula on shades like Punk are greatly improved in Born to Run. 

All in all, I’m very happy with the quality of Born to Run. Though, I would swap out some of the repeated shadows (Smog) or completely outrageous shades (like Baja) for 2 or 3 more wearable shades to make Born to Run a homerun for me. With that said, I’m so excited to own this palette. I’m sure Born to Run will be flying onto my vanity often. 

Until next time,

Kayla