Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Essie Bridal Collection Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

Essie's annual bridal color collection was a shock this year. Why? Because it contains no sheers. I'm serious, every color in this collection is a full-coverage opaque finish. How unexpected is that?!


Essie Instant Hot. A peach-tinged white creme base with metallic silver shimmer. On my nails this looks mostly white with just a hint of peach to it, but in the bottle it looks a lot more peach. The shimmer in this is flat and silver, like silver foil, and the particles seem fairly large, but it doesn't show up on the nail. This color is also extremely streaky; it required four coats to become even. Looks very harsh.


Essie Like To Be Bad. This is a peach-pink creme base with pink-purple-orange duochrome shimmer. Sadly, the shimmer in this one doesn't show up on the nail, either. You can see a little bit of it in very bright light, but not enough to really notice unless you're staring at it.



Essie Love and Acceptance. A very light grey-purple creme. Mellow and muted, slightly more purple than grey.


Essie Who Is The Boss? Light blue-toned green creme. Has a bit of grey in it. It's quite faded/weathered/desaturated looking, but not quite pastel. Also very streaky.

The formula on these was not good. All the shades were streaky, some worse than others. I did four coats of all just to even out the streakiness. The texture was a little less smooth than usual, which only exacerbated the streakiness of the polish. The dry time was good, though, very quick.

Lately Essie has been so good about making their colors smooth and streak-free, so I was surprised and disappointed that these were so streaky. In addition to the streaky formula, all of the shades look rather harsh and chalky and I didn't find any of them to be flattering on my hands. I can't say that any of these are really worth having... Essie already has much nicer soft shades from previous collections that apply smoother and that don't look so harsh. Who Is The Boss? does seem like a unique color at least.

The Essie 2012 Bridal Collection is available at salons now.

(This was sent for review.)

Edit: Anyone having problems viewing the images in full size, or is it just on my end?

21 comments:

  1. Thank you for swatches! I agree about the harshness and chalkiness of some of these. The first one especially. Not to mention, the shimmer not coming out of the second one is annoying. Essie seems to have this problem a lot. In the end, the only ones I like are Love and Acceptance and Who Is The Boss the most.

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  2. Meh.. not my favorite collection by Essie. I am not drawn to any of them, besides *maybe* Like to Be Bad, but even that I can live without.

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  3. It's a shame about the formula, because I am drawn to colours like Love & Acceptance. But reviews like this make me love your blog even more, as it just confirms that your opinions are honest and complete! When you say something is awesome, I know it really is!

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  4. Great swatches and review. Honestly, it just seems like companies are jumping on the "bridal" bandwagon in the hopes they'll capture women who are planning their wedding. All the colours seem a bit harsh in general to be bridal.

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  5. Your nails and your manicure looks absolutely amazing!.. Gorgeous shades, the result is really nice :) xx

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  6. I wish I had read this before I bought them all! Luckily, it was only the mini set. I was so disappointed in the formula. I couldn't even get Instant Hot to look decent enough to leave it on for a NOTD - clearly I don't have your skills :) It's a shame because I actually really liked all the colors.

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  7. Thanks for the swatches and honest review. I was really excited when I was told a while back that they were opaque but it's such a shame that the formula is bad...

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  8. Thanks for the swatches,its a shame about the formula, Essie's previous collections are better. The large images working fine on my end :D

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  9. Somehow you still manage to make them look good! I think you could smear bird poo on your nails and make it look good! Lol. You're just awesome like that! :) xoxo

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  10. Sadly I bought Instant Hot and is one of the worst polishes ever.. The formula is horrible and rough and the final color is so chalky that I just removed it and started again with a different shade!! i wish I had read your review before!! thanks for your honesty!

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  11. I just bought Who's The Boss today...and it came out nicely with 2 coats. I really like it because it's a little bit different than the other blues that Essie puts out. They looked nice before I put OPI's Pirouette Your Whistle on top (then it looked fantastic). Didn't try the others, but thanks for the great swatches! :D

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  12. I like the peachy pink, really beautiful :)

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  14. What is it with Essie's formulas? I love their shades, but I'm constantly layering due to problems with opacity and/or streakiness. It's also unfortunate that the beautiful shimmers in their bottles don't seem to transfer to the nail very well.

    These problems are starting to make me hesitant about putting new Essie polishes on my wish list, which is a shame because they make such pretty colours!

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  15. Yep, I also have promblems with the images :/ But the polihes are still so beautiful... but i don't think i need any of these. They aren't so special

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  16. I feel like the last 2 swatches look like Zoya Kendall or Megan and Bevin...or is that just me?

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  17. I feel like the last 2 swatches look like Zoya Kendal or Megan (lavender) and Bevin (green)...or is that just me?

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  18. I have three out of these colors and I agree with the streakiness. Essie is actually my favorite brand, and since it became more affordable here in Germany I buy a lot of polishes from them in the store and not online anymore.
    What I never liked on Essie polishes were the small brushes.
    The polishes you get over here, have a wide brush like Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure or Nicole by OPI. They go on so much smoother.
    I'd wished this Bridal collection would have come out here and had such a brush, that would have taken away a lot of the streakiness.

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  19. These are such pretty colours. Thank you for sharing :D
    Jen

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  20. do you have a suggestion for a good dupe for the instant hot? i have been looking for that colour forever but cant seem to find it, and now that i have it seems that the formula stinks. :(

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  21. Its almost a year later, but I recently bought 'who is the boss' and absolutely love it! How funny is that the color is pretty similar to what is trending right now for nails?

    Mine to Five

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