Tony Moly Goddess Aura Rainbow Highlighter

The rainbow highlight trend has died down a bit in the West, but it seems to have finally made it’s way to Korea, with (as far as I know) Tony Moly being the first major Korean road shop brand to make the leap. If you are interested in seeing pictures of how this product performs, keep reading!

Please ignore the obnoxiously orange background – I have been preferring how my photos turn out in natural lighting as opposed to taken in my bedroom, so I took these sitting outside of a cafe near my house in 5 degree weather – dedication 😂.

So the Tony Moly “Luminous – Goddess Aura Aurolighter” came out in November, and having always wanted one of the famous rainbow highlighters that were all over social media, I knew I had to get it. I was quite surprised this product came out in Korea at all, as it is quite typical of standard Korean makeup style to lean towards a more natural look, and a rainbow highlight is nowhere near that!

The packaging is a simple flat, slim black case. It’s actually quite a lot bigger than I expected!

The case is opened with a button on the bottom half of it, and inside is the pan and a mirror. As the case is quite big, the mirror is nice and big too!

This product is more of a shimmer than a glitter highlight, which is great for me because I tend to not like glitter in my highlighters as I find it brings out the texture on my skin in an unflattering way. The texture of the powder itself is a little on the dry/dusty side, but I find this does not affect application.

This is actually my cream contour brush…

This ELF brush is the only brush I had that could fit all 6 colours on it at once, and even then I barely got the pink! This is what my brush looks like after one gentle swipe across the pan.

•○ Swatches ○•

In order for the colours to show up on the camera I had to go over them a few times, but this is basically what you’re getting at full pigmentation. This is of course not how I would apply it on my face, as it’s quite bold! I did it this way just so you can see how the colours look. These can also be used as eyeshadows when applied at full pigment like this!

Ta-da! This is how it looks on my face. My biggest “regret” about this product is that the pan size is so large. This is usually not something people complain about, but when it comes to a product like this where you want to stamp the rainbow on perfectly, I find it’s too big and you end up just having a rainbow on your WHOLE face. I would prefer for the pan to be 1/2 or 3/4 of the size so that I can put the whole rainbow on my cheekbones only instead of having glowing pink eye bags and glowing purple contour! Although I’m sure there are people who are into that look and that’s cool too 🙂 .

This is how the colours looked when I swirled around a packing brush (Morphe M504) into all the colours. It’s a subtle shimmery pearly white! It leans on the cool side because when mixed together, the blues and purples tend to dominate.

Mixed together

This is actually a really pretty highlight when mixed! As I’m so pale, you can kind of see a bit of a blueish colour when I’m not in the light, but it’s so subtle it doesn’t bother me. I will definitely be using it like this too!

Because the pan size is too large to do the whole rainbow at once, I like to take this small packing brush (Morphe M507) and put each individual colour on different parts of my face, as I will demonstrate below!

Pink

I love using pink highlighters on my cheeks, especially on top of pink blush! I would call this the subtle, non-glittery sister of Anastasia Beverly Hill’s “Pink Heart” from the Moonchild Glow Kit.

Yellow

The yellow colour makes a great brow highlight to mix with warm looks! If you don’t have as much yellow in your skin as I do, then you can totally use this as a face highlight too.

Blue

This one looks whiteish in the photo, but in real life it is SUPER BLUE. On my skin you can actually tell I have painted blue on my face when it’s not reflecting light, but I don’t hate the effect! However, to avoid this I would probably use it as more of a cupid’s bow highlight on top of a cool toned lipstick.

Purple

This one is another one that I would wear on my cheeks or as a brow highlight. The lilac is very flattering and would mix well with certain blush colours!

•○ Final Thoughts ○•

I find this to be a really fun, versatile product that can even be appreciated and used in different ways by those that aren’t keen on putting a full rainbow smack on their face 😀 ! I applied the two full face swatches over BB Cream before removing everything with makeup remover and applying the individual colours. The individual ones were applied on a bare face with no primer, and despite having applied them on no base, I found them to last pretty much all day!

This highlighter goes for 19,800 KRW for 10g. To put the pan size in perspective, MAC Extra Dimension Skinfinish highlighters look quite big and are 9g, so imagine the size of this one! I luckily bought this on a 30% discount, but I feel that even at full price the pan size, good quality, and multi-use capabilities make it worth the price.

And that was my first review of a Tony Moly product 😀 ! It’s fun to see Korea picking up on more bold, “unnatural” makeup trends lately. I can’t wait to see what they’ll bring out next! Until next time~ ( ^_^)／