Illamasqua Chased ($23 at Sephora) is a lilac pink blush with an enormous pan and nuclear pigmentation.  The blush pan stretches a luxurious 2 x 2 inches across, with plenty of surface for the largest blush brushes.  The pigmentation took me by suprise–you can see in the swatch, below, marked “full intensity”  how it looks applied with a brush with densely-packed bristles.  Up until now, my most pigmented blush was Chanel Joues Contraste in Turbulent, but this award has easily been displaced by Chased.

The first time you apply Chased, you may wish to reach for your Duo Fiber (sometimes called “skunk”) brush for better control.

As you can see, Chased in nearly matte in tone.  You can see the difference in texture by comparing the swatches of Chased to the much more shimmery Chanel Joues Contraste blush in Narcisse to its right.  Of course, if you prefer you can add shimmer by layering a highlighter over Chased.

Illamasqua’s signature packaging looked at little “corner-y” at first.  However, after I purchased Chased, I found that the plastic case is well-machined and does not appear to have any potentially gouging sharpness. In fact, it seemed to fit well into my organization system and the shape makes the blush easy to locate among the others.