Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Illamasqua Naked Strangers Collection Summer 2012 Swatches and Review

The Naked Strangers collection from Illamasqua is a different take on summer colors. Instead of the usual summer brights and neons, they've created a mixture of fleshy nudes and gleaming metallics. The full collection consists of two new lipglosses in Intimacy (nude pink brown) and Stranger (platinum gold), Powder Blusher in Naked Rose (neutral beige brown), Cream Blusher in Zygomatic (naked pink brown), and three new nail varnish shades (Faithful, Monogamous, Swinger).




Illamasqua Naked Strangers Collection Nail Varnish
Faithful, Monogamous, and Swinger.


Illamasqua Faithful. Faithful has a light, dusty-looking, slightly grey-tinged brown creme base with lots of bright, shiny copper metallic shimmer and just a touch of golden broken flake microglitter. The contrast in this color is really interesting. In dim lighting, it looks like a dusty, faded, almost taupe-like brown with a bit of red shimmer. In daylight indoors it looks like an earthy copper bronze. When you see the polish in sunlight, then it really shines. All the metallic copper shimmer comes out and adds a glow to the dusty base color, like smoldering embers. Very cool color.



Illamasqua Monogamous. This color dries to a rubbery matte finish, much like the Illamasqua Theatre of the Nameless rubber mattes. The top photo is its natural finish, the bottom photo is with a coat of topcoat. This color is a light pink-beige creme. It looks like a bottle of liquid foundation, it's a very fleshy, skin-like color. Unlike a lot of pale beiges, this one has a very soft look and it isn't chalky or harsh at all. Because it lacks that harsh, chalky finish, it's very easy to wear and looks clean and flattering without being sheer. It looks a lot more peach against my fair/cool skin tone, but it seems lighter and more pink by itself in the bottle.



Illamasqua Swinger. Swinger is a foil comprised of multiple shades of metallic particles. The main color is gold, but a neutral, non-yellowy gold. There's also platinum, champagne, very light bronze and metallic taupe. The overall look of the polish is rough and speckled with a slight green tinge to it. It only looks rough, though. It dries flat and smooth, even without topcoat. Sparkly and dense.

The formula on these was perfect. They glided onto my nails like a dream and none of these shades gave me even a hint of trouble. I did two coats of each and that's all they needed. The drying time on these is slightly faster than the usual Illamasqua dry time, which was a nice surprise. Flawless formula and application, no complaints here.

Overall, a small collection, but a good one. I like the slightly different take on summer color that they've presented here. The palette of matte nudes, browns/bronzes and pinks with the contrast of gleaming metallics is really great for summer, especially on tanned skin. I was especially pleased with the formula of the nail polishes, it was even better than I expected.

This collection doesn't officially release until the end of the month, but if you're a registered member on Illamasqua.com, you can order these items starting today. Details below.

All you need to do is log in to your Illamasqua.com account, or register for an account. A hidden Naked Strangers pre-release category will then be revealed within the COLLECTIONS section on the left menu within the shop.



The Illamasqua Naked Strangers Summer 2012 Collection goes on sale May 31st, 2012 and will be available at Sephora starting on June 7th, 2012. Registered members on Illamasqua.com can order the collection now.

(This was sent for review.)

29 comments:

  1. Ok, I might finally have to pop my Illamasqua cherry. Faithful is just fascinatingly beautiful!

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  2. These are really nice, I especially like Faithful.

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  3. I'm not too keen on brown nail polish, I don't know why probably *poop* lol. Though I do love that gold. Gorgeous immaculate nail swatches as always! <3

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  4. I'm normally not into nudes, but monogamous is rather fascinating.

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  5. I love the fact that they have decided to break tradition and have not brought out neons or brights,I love faithfull and am always on the hunt for the perfect brown/bronze to match my skintone, will have to get this one, gold is nice to, worship worthy nails as usual :D

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  6. Swinger looked so promising in that top photo, but nope...too bad. I'd really love a polish that was dark smoky silver with diffuse gold nanoglitter. Thanks for your fantastic on-the-nail swatches, as always!

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  7. I'm in love with Faithful! so unique!!

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  8. Faithful is so pretty!!! Swinger is super pretty too, I may have to pick up this set (as my firs Illamasquas!)

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  9. Swinger is so pretty!!! I'll have to watch out for it at Sephora.

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  10. I love these. The neons are great fun, to be sure, but these neutrals are much more to my speed (I just read in Allure that neutrals are the thing this summer, too.) Faithful is lovely, in name and color, and unique in that it's the first brown I could actually fancy myself wearing. Swinger looks cool, too, with all those shades of metallic. But the name.... Not gonna happen. I'd sooner wear Taint. At least that's kind of funny. ;)

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  11. Faithful and Monogamous are beautiful!

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  12. Interesting colours! Kind of unexpected for a summer collection. Which is nice! I think Faithful is the most interesting to me.

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  13. Ahhh I love the names and colours, what a cool collection!

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  14. Faithful reminds me of OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know? I'm loving Swinger. I haven't been daring enough to try a foil, but this might the just the right one for me.

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  15. I love that these aren't your typical summer colors, but they still feel very summer-y to me.

    Any idea how close Faithful is to China Glaze Ingrid? Looks like Ingrid may be darker and cooler-toned.

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  16. Is it just me or does Swinger look like another Graphite dupe? I'd love to see a comparison.

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  17. Is it just me (or my monitor), or is Swinger another Chanel Graphite dupe.

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  18. Love them! I just ordered them all. I am really an Illamasqua fanatic>>

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  19. Faithful is just to die for. It looks so yummy! I am glad they did something different from the brights that have been all over lately. Not that I don't like them but how many neon oranges can you see before you say, "next." lol

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  20. That first one is really interesting.

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  21. The only color that looks interesting to me is Faithful. I like it in the bottle with its shimmer but I don't think I would like it on me .

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  22. I absolutely adore this summer's neon trend, but it's nice to see something so different coming out too. Beautiful swatches as always. :)

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  23. Faithful and Swinger are incredible, but I'm not sure if Monogamous is worth the price. Could you do a comparison between OPI Number one Nemesis and Swinger?

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  24. at $38 a polish in Melbourne...maybe not.

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  25. at $38 a polish in Melbourne...maybe not

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  26. I'm starting to think that Faithful (which is the only one I want from this collection) might be a dupe to deborah Lippmann's No More Drama but I'm not sure.

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