I have a shoebox in my closet that my husband is convinced is empty because it’s so light, but it’s actually stuffed with about fifteen years of MAC eyeshadow pans I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. Some of them are cracked. A couple are down to bare metal. I don’t care. That box is basically a diary of my whole adult life, and probably a good chunk of high school too.
I started wearing MAC makeup around 2003, back when I was sixteen and thought a trip to the mall counter was a legitimate weekend plan. Twenty-some years later I’m a mom of two, I still love eye makeup more than is probably reasonable, and I still get a little thrill walking past a MAC counter even when I have zero intention of buying anything. Let’s talk about it.
Where It All Started
My first MAC purchase was Woodwinked. Everyone’s first MAC purchase was Woodwinked, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I remember buying this one because a girl in my chemistry class had it on and it looked like actual gold dust on her eyelids, and sixteen-year-old me needed that immediately.
I was not a skilled makeup artist. I want to be clear about that up front, because this isn’t going to be some polished professional retrospective. I was applying eyeshadow with my finger for a solid two years before anyone told me brushes existed. But MAC was the brand that made me feel like I was doing makeup right, even when I clearly wasn’t.
Standing at the Counter, Waiting My Turn
Before online shopping took over everything, going to MAC meant an actual trip to the department store counter. Ours was inside a Macy’s, tucked between the perfume section and the escalators, and I have such specific memories of standing there waiting for an MA to be free.
The counter ladies (I say that with total affection) were intense. They knew every shade by name and finish and could talk you into a four-eyeshadow look before you’d even said what you wanted. I once went in for a single blush and walked out with a full face chart, a lipstick, and a Fix+ I didn’t ask for. That’s just how it worked.
There was also a specific kind of anxiety to counter shopping that younger makeup fans probably don’t understand. You had to commit. No swatching forty things at home in good lighting and returning half of it later. You stood there, under fluorescent lights, hoping you picked right.
The Limited Editions I Still Think About
This is where it gets fun, and also a little painful, because some of these I genuinely regret not stockpiling.
Hello Kitty was the one that broke the internet before “broke the internet” was even a phrase people used. I stood in line for that one. Actually in a line, at a mall, at 8am. Looking back, that’s a wild thing to have done for makeup, but I don’t regret it one bit.
Barbie Loves MAC came a bit later and I remember being a little let down honestly. The packaging was adorable but I never understood the hype behind some of the shadow shades in that collection, they wore thin on me by midday, and for a limited edition that people were reselling for triple the price, that felt like a letdown.
Heatherette, though? That one deserved every bit of its reputation. The pinks in that collection were genuinely unlike anything else MAC had out at the time, and I still think about the blush shade from it more than a decade later.
Then there was the whole Style Warrior collection, which I bought almost entirely because of the packaging honestly. This wasn’t one of my favorites in terms of actual wearable shades. Gorgeous to look at on the shelf, less gorgeous once it was actually on my face.
Trading Shades on Forums Like It Was a Part-Time Job
Okay, this part of MAC history doesn’t get talked about enough. Before resale apps existed, if you missed a limited-edition eyeshadow, your options were basically eBay or the makeup forums, and the forums were where the real trading happened.
I spent an embarrassing amount of my early twenties on makeup forums trying to track down discontinued shades. There was an entire subculture of people cataloging swap lists, doing shade comparisons, mailing tiny ziplock baggies of eyeshadow pans to strangers across the country on pure trust. I once traded three shadows and a lipstick for a single pan of a shade I’d missed out on, and I remember feeling like I’d won something.
Looking back, it’s kind of amazing how much community there was around something as small as an eyeshadow pan. People genuinely cared about helping each other find a shade they loved. It didn’t feel transactional the way resale sometimes feels now. It felt like a hobby with actual friends attached to it.
Not Every Shade Deserved the Hype (Sorry)
I think part of loving a brand for two decades is being honest that not everything was a hit, and MAC had its share of shades that I just never got.
All That Glitters is a perfect example. Everyone acted like it was some universally flattering, can’t-live-without-it shade, and I never understood the hype behind it. On me it just looked kind of muddy and flat, more brown than gold, and I ended up giving my pan away.
On the flip side, there are shades that I think were criminally underrated. Satin Taupe, for instance. This shade deserved more attention than it got. It’s one of those quiet, does-everything neutrals that never got the flashy reputation of something like Soft Brown, but I’ve repurchased it more times than almost anything else in my collection.
Cork eyeshadow is another one people love to praise, and don’t get me wrong, it’s a good shade, but I don’t think it’s the miracle product some corners of the internet made it out to be. It’s a nice brown. That’s it. That’s the whole review.
Rediscovering Old Favorites Now That I’m in My Thirties
Something funny happens once you’ve been doing makeup for twenty years: you start circling back to things you loved at sixteen with completely fresh eyes.
A few months ago I dug out that old shoebox, mostly because my daughter wanted to “play makeup,” and I ended up swatching everything on the back of my hand like I was seventeen again. Some shades I barely remembered buying. Others hit me with this weird wave of nostalgia, like Vanilla pigment, which I used to layer over everything because I genuinely thought it made me look glowier. It didn’t, really. I didn’t care.
What surprised me most was how many of those old eye makeup shades still worked for me now. My coloring hasn’t changed dramatically, and a good neutral brown is still a good neutral brown whether it’s 2006 or now. It made me realize how much of makeup, at least for me, isn’t really about chasing something new. It’s about the shades that stick with you.
Building a Routine That’s Still Somehow Mine
These days my actual eye makeup routine is a lot less experimental than it was in high school. I’m usually doing my whole face in under ten minutes because there’s a kid somewhere in the house asking me for cereal. But the bones of it are still the same brand, still the same brown-and-gold combinations I fell in love with as a teenager standing at a department store counter.
I don’t buy every limited edition anymore. I’ve learned that lesson the expensive way. But every time MAC brings back an old shade or does a rerelease of something I once traded a stranger for on a forum, I feel that same little jolt I felt at sixteen.
That’s the thing about loving a brand for this long. It stops being about any one product being perfect. It’s about the whole messy, nostalgic history of it, the counters, the collections, the questionable purchases, the shades that deserved more love than they got. My shoebox isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.