Guerlain Ecrin 2 Couleurs / Eyeshadow Duo in Two Rock

I was looking forward to the Fall Voilette de Madame collection from Guerlain as the collection debuts the new (and permanent) Ecrin 2 Couleurs shadows.

They are housed in a slender golden case which opens vertically and contains a mirror and double ended foam applicator.

The duos consist of one pure colour with a matte finish and one veil, in either a sparkly or metallic finish. Unfortunately there were no testers out so although the SA kindly got them all out of the box for me to peak at, not being able to test the colours in hindsight proved a mistake.
I bought Two Rock 01 (£30), which is a matte sage green, and sparkly deep charcoal.

The green is very pigmented, unfortunately it looks dull and muddied and very unflattering on me. In terms of formula its reminiscent of the singles in that it adheres very quickly to the skin so its best to pat on the colour. However I don't find it as wearable as the singles, because there is not much movement at all in the formula so that I cannot apply it sheer and its difficult to blend. The sparkly charcoal, is actually not as sparkly as it looks, it applies patchy and has a crumbly texture (as you can see in my picture below after its been used). Due to the crumbliness its hard to use it as a liner.

Both shades work best without a primer but either way I do not find them long lasting, the charcoal is noticeable worse as it has fall out, creases and transfers easily onto the higher part of the lid (this is having tried it over 3 different primers), used wet it does adhere better but fall out and creasing is still a problem.
It seems odd to me that the veil shadow doesn't work at all well applied over the top of the green, since I figured that was its purpose.
Swatched below dry, then the charcoal wet,

Below I have used the green applied over the charcoal, try as I might I can't blend these shades well so  application looks a mess and you can see in the close up photo the crumbliness of the charcoal.


I've had a lot of Guerlain eyeshadows in the past and feel thoroughly disappointed by this, whilst the shadows combined do give a vibrant intense look, the formula is  poor quality and too much of an effort to work with. Now perhaps its just the sparkly veiled duos that have this performance so there might be a ray of light with the metallic ones, but suffice to say that this is a complete fail for me.

I bought this from John Lewis