Long before TikTok made it easy for a beauty product to go viral overnight, Urban Decay’s Naked Palette managed to become one of the most popular makeup items of all time. Launched in 2010, the palette’s popularity skyrocketed almost immediately thanks to magazines and YouTube tutorials, becoming a beloved product of professional makeup artists and amateur beauty lovers alike. In eight years, the original palette sold more than 30 million units and spawned a vast franchise that saw additions like Naked Heat, Naked Cherry, and Naked Reloaded.
Then, in 2018, seemingly out of nowhere, the brand announced it was discontinuing Naked. “It’s a little painful to leave your past behind, but it’s also essential to always evolve,” Wende Zomnir, Urban Decay’s founding partner, said in a statement at the time. “I will forever miss Naked, but we plan to turn the grief into even more greatness. Urban Decay will continue to thrive in Naked’s memory and honor—just wait and see.”
Turns out, that grief was temporary, and Naked’s memory loomed greatly over the brand. Today, Urban Decay announced it’s bringing back the original Naked Eyeshadow Palette for a limited time, complete with new and improved formulas.
At a time when a new generation of beauty consumers are rediscovering Y2K fashion and beauty products like Clinique Black Honey and capri pants, it makes sense that Urban Decay wants to hedge its bets on the return of its 2010s megastar. “We see countless memes and videos of consumers still using their old Naked palettes and ongoing comments from the community to bring it back,” Arnaud Kerviche, vice president of marketing for Urban Decay, tells Allure. “We’re now in a moment where new generations haven’t had the opportunity to know the original Naked—often imitated, never duplicated. It was time to celebrate the nostalgia with one generation, but at the same time introduce it to the next.”
For my fellow millennials and Gen X’ers, the Naked Palette needs no introduction. You may even have a dilapidated, empty-pan version sitting at the bottom of your makeup bag. For those who aren’t so familiar, the 12-pan eye shadow palette contained an array of neutral matte, satin, and metallic shades that went from light at one end to dark on the other. Standout hues included Sin, a pearly champagne shimmer; Half Baked, a soft glimmery gold; Toasted, a rosy taupe shimmer, and Creep, a black satin flecked with silver glitter. It was all you needed to create looks for any and every occasion, from a sculpted, no-makeup makeup effect to full-on smoky eyes you could pair with your “going out” top.
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“The Naked Palette was always one of those good basics,” says makeup artist Vincent Oquendo, a longtime fan of the palette. “And no matter how far I’ve come in my career, it remains a staple. For the everyday customer, it was one of those palettes that you didn’t have to work that hard to make look good.” The original Naked was also a palette that lots of people could enjoy. “It was one of the first neutral palettes that could truly be used on all skin tones,” says New York-based makeup artist Grace Ahn. “The richness of the pigments along with the variety of light to dark colors was not as widely available at the time. I also remember the black eye shadow was one of the darkest black shadows of that era.”