Rimmel Glam Eyes in Mayfair, English Breakfast and Afternoon Tea

I have not had a lot of experience with the Rimmel line (other than a few lipsticks) but when I saw these Glam Eyes eye shadow quads, I just had to check them out! At first glance, the colors looked like they would work beautifully together and historically, I really love colors like these with my green eyes. At $6.99, they’re very reasonably priced so I decided to purchase all three---Mayfair, English Breakfast and Afternoon Tea. Read on to see what I thought after wearing each of these!

Upon examining Mayfair, the first quad that I tried on, I thought, “Oh great! This reminds me of one of my Dior 5 color pans (Rosy Tan, I think) so if it works as well, this is a HUGE bargain!” The first thing I did was to swatch each color and that’s when the trouble began. I literally had to dig into the lightest color (at the bottom) and the pink in order to get any pigmentation to show up at all. The medium tone brown is better and the darker shade is best, but all of these shades were a real disappointment. Don’t get me wrong---they’re very pretty---but you really have to go over and over your lids in order to build any color at all. The lightest and darkest colors are matte while the pink and the medium brown have some shimmer but nothing that I would consider off putting (which is good for aging eyes). And while I don’t think they’re really that blendable, the fact of the matter is, once you get them on your eyes, there’s very little definition to be seen due to the lack of pigment. So that could be a good thing if you’re not great at blending or not such a great thing if you’re used to much more pigmented eye shadows (heck---Wet & Wild Color Icon shadows have much more pigment than this and W&W is cheaper!).

You can see what I mean from the swatch picture above. Looks promising but really not great. I tried to take a picture of my eyes while using Mayfair but, honestly, it literally didn’t show up in a way that could provide a decent example. This one may be good for a natural look but I can’t recommend it.

Ages of Beauty rating for Mayfair: *



English Breakfast is a cool toned neutral quad that features a cream colored matte shadow as the highlight, a very light tan satin and a very light taupe shimmer as well as a darker gray/brown matte shadow at the top. The lightest color has more pigment than that in Mayfair but the light tan does not offer a lot in the way of color. The light taupe is a bit better and the darkest shade seems to have good pigment compared to some of the others. I actually like this quad the best out of the three due to the contrast in the shadows. You’ll see in the pictures, below, that I was able to get a decent look going with this quad. I used the lightest shade from the lash line to brow bone then placed the light tan towards the outside of the lid, the light taupe in the crease and then the darkest shade at the outside crease. This is a decent, but not great, neutral look and much better than Mayfair.




I think you can see what I mean about English Breakfast. This one is staying in my makeup kit, rather than going into the reject box!

Ages of Beauty rating for English Breakfast: ***


Afternoon Tea is a warmer toned quad that contains four shades in the same configuration as the others (two mattes and two satins). This time, the shade with absolutely no discernable pigment is the lightest shade, a warm cream matte. In every swatch I’ve done, I can barely see this color on my skin. The lighter brown (a satin shade) is a medium pigment but the other two, a warmer taupe and the darker warm brown have much more pigment. In fact the second to darkest shade is VERY pigmented and makes a very nice crease or liner color.


On the eyes, this quad (with the exception of the lightest shade) can be built up fairly well or applied so that it leaves a more natural finish, like I did in the picture above.

Ages of Beauty rating for Afternoon Tea: ***

Have you tried any of these eye quads? Please share your thoughts!