Thursday, January 12, 2012

Essie Navigate Her Collection Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

Instead of going the all-pastel route for this year's spring collection, Essie decided to give us a little splash of color along with a few traditional spring pastels.

Essie A Crewed Interest. A light peach creme. It's light but I wouldn't call it pastel. It's not strongly orange or pink. Just a nice, glossy, easy-to-wear peach.


Essie Navigate Her. A pale green creme. A slightly different mint green than the ones we usually see. This one looks more yellow-toned than most of the mints in my collection. It also looks decent against my skintone, which is very rare for this type of green. I really like it. It looks soft but fresh at the same time.


Essie Ole Caliente. This color doesn't really say spring to me, but that's perfectly fine. It's awesome. It's a bright red-based coral creme. It's not quite as neon-bright in real life as it looks here, but it is pretty saturated. It has a slight softness to it that keeps it from being brighter.


Essie Orange, It's Obvious! What a name. I like it, though. This is an orange creme. Although it is very saturated, it's not quite so neon-leaning as it appears here. Like Ole Caliente, it has a soft quality to the finish that keeps it from being super bright. It's a little darker than I'd think of a spring orange being, but I like it more this way. It's more of a tangerine orange than a pumpkin orange. More red than yellow.


Essie To Buy, Or Not To Buy? This one is tricky. It's a pastel lilac creme base, but in the bottle it appears to have tons of chunky purple/blue duochrome particles. Once it's on the nail, the particles mostly disappear and it looks like a plain creme until the light hits it just right. I tried to capture the way the light hits the sparkles; you may need to enlarge this to see that. It's very subtle.


Essie Tour De Finance. That sound like the most boring tour ever. Is it a race to see who can file their tax return the quickest? Anyway, this is a medium fuchsia with a pink and blue fine particle shimmer. It looks like it has a tiny bit of a purple flash because of the color-shifting shimmer, but it's not prominent.

The formula on these was perfect. I really enjoyed swatching these. The polish went exactly where I wanted it to, no pooling or running or anything like that. The only formula problem with these is that they're streaky on the first coat. The second coat evens them out, but I needed three coats to get them to look perfect. The brush was flawless and made application really easy. Drying time was great. All-around excellent in the formula department.

I like this collection. It's not the most creative and the names are a little cheesy, but all the colors look really nice on. It's a pretty straightforward collection; half bright, half pastel, with a little bit of shimmer. Nothing really complex or brand new, but still a really nice group of colors. My favorite is Orange, It's Obvious, but I love Ole Caliente almost as much.

This is supposed to be in stores starting in February, but I don't have the exact date.

(This was sent for review.)

35 comments:

  1. I really love Ole Caliente! Some of these colors look really unique, thank you for the swatches!

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  2. I like all but the last one. Thanks for swatching!

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  3. I just love peach..from the fruit to the color and that peach color has to be one of the best I have seen in a polish! I like the orange too, and I don't usually like orange polishes to often.

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  4. Thanks for the swatches. I can't wait to get my hands on all but Tour de Finance.

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  5. LOL, Pantone declared tangerine as "the color of 2012"... and we've our first collection with a tangerine polish! Navigate Her & Crewed interest are the two that most appealed to me... this collection feels a bit thrown together to me. Thanks for the beautiful swatches!

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  6. @ANA: I noticed that too! A few of the other colors in this collection also match the Pantone Spring 2012 color choices too.

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  7. @ANA: I noticed that too! A few of the other colors in this collection also match a few of the colors from the Pantone Spring 2012 collection too.

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  8. I was really looking forward to To Buy, Or Not To Buy? after reading the description in the early promos but the sparkles are so hidden. :/ Still pretty though. LOVE Navigate Her! I have been waiting for a pretty light green that doesn't give me lobster hand. :D

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  9. Those are definitely drool worthy! What gorgeous colors! :)

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  10. I like Orange its Obvious and Navigate Her. And I want to really like Ole Caliente but it looks exactly like their Red-y Set Ex from a while back.

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  11. Would love to hear your thoughts or see comparisons of “A Crewed Interest” vs “Van D’Go” and “To Buy or Not to Buy” vs “Lilacism”!

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  12. I feel like Essie has been killing it lately. And I cannot WAIT to see swatches of the resort collection!

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  13. OOOO! I love all the colours, especially Navigate Her!

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  14. Love the orange one. Might have to get that one.

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  15. Nothing new & dramatically different. Still a nice collection. I may be purchasing a few. Especially that green. I just can't resist them.

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  16. I like the colors but I really, *really* detest the name of the collection and the press release description. Navigate Her sounds like something a Pick Up Artist sea captain would say whilst in port. The press release sounds stunningly oblivious to the horrible economic conditions and employment problems (in the US and elsewhere). Maybe they were trying for an aspirational, "Calgon take me away" feel, but if so, they missed that and went into oblivious "let them eat cake" territory.

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  17. Great swatches but probably the only ones I'd get would be the lilac and the fuchsia. The orange colors are so hot, too bad I can't wear them! Any shade of orange -- bright, tangerine, peach, coral, rust -- makes me look hideous. I'll just enjoy seeing the trendy oranges on other people. :-D

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  18. Navigate Her is beautiful! Its my favorite in the collection.

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  19. Wow! Both of the oranges in this collection are super close to the 2 oranges coming in Feb in the OPI Holland collection it looks to me. I wish I could wear the green - it's interesting and different in a good way - but I KNOW despite it's not chalky, it's going to make me look like I am really ill. I would get them all just to play if I had figured out where to keep putting more polish but I am flat way beyond out of room by about 900 bottles. I have to be really selective until I sort and thin some out again. Hate to do that as I always make some goofs and find in years down the road I really regret having parted with a # of the ones that left my hands.

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  20. I have got to have the green pastel colour! It'd be a great addition to my stash!

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  21. I have got to have the green one Essie navigate her! It'd be a great addition to my stash. I have nothing like it!

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  22. I like all but the last two. That's too bad about about the purple, it sounds like it would have been awesome.

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  23. I went to my local Walgreens today and snagged Orange, It's Obvious and A Crewed Interest!

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  24. Oooohh, I can't wait to try these! I like all of them, but I will DEFINITELY get A Crewed Interest as I've been searching for the perfect peach that isn't too pink or too orange. Also, is it just me, or does the collection name (Navigate Her) sound kind of dirty, like an 80s nautical-themed porno?

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  25. I think "Navigate Her" is supposed to be pronounced the same as "Navigator," because otherwise, yes, it sounds rather sexist.

    After staring at these beautiful swatches all over again, now I want the green one, not just the lilac and fuchsia. Who'da thought green for me, an over-50 gal? Fun!

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  26. I am definitely getting "Navigate Her", even though the name does sound like a nautical porno.

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  27. Oh my god, nautical porno! XD So true, exactly what I was thinking.

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  28. Want to see what the goodies are hiding in To Buy or Not to Buy? Top it with the new Sally Hanson Asiles Be There - part of the newer collection in the Diamond Strenght group that has Diamond and Glass Slipper in it. Asiles is an irridecent topper that has a clear base with pink grouping shift micro flake in it. It looks great on tops of this Essie and a # of other newbies I picked up like Downtown and Punk from Revlon - both metallic sparklers - one is a medow green, the other is a dusty light blue but not power or baby blue. I just got lucky seeing the last of these Revlons as per usual, everything was super picked over of the tiny bit of polish haul we get into our Rite Aide in town. But go grab that Asiles Sally Hanson - I landed mine on sale. It's a topper many of you are going to like and use a lot. It's along the line of some of the CND sparkle effects only more so and wow - what it does to that Essie spring 2011 lilac! Good stuff.

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  29. Love the swatches...What top coat do you use?

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  30. So glad to have your swatches to check against! How does Tour de Finance look next to Super Bossa Nova? Is it just a bit quieter (i.e. less duo-chrome, less obvious sparkles)? And is Orange, It's Obvious a better version of Brazilliant? I wanted to love that one but I felt like I was wearing pylons on my fingers!

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  32. what do you use as a top coat? It looks so nice, hate this random brand I'm using now lol

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  33. Just pointing out that 'tour' in French actually translates to 'tower'. Like how the Eiffel Tower is called Le tour d'eiffel in French. So although it wouldn't be a financial tour, I'm assuming a finance tower would be equally boring :P

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  34. I really enjoy lookin' at Ur nails -they're just perfect -their length,shape,cuticles <3. The 1st,3rd,4th & the 5th polishes are my favourite!

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