CND Chocolate Milk – Swatch and Review

CND Chocolate Milk
CND Chocolate Milk

Today I have swatches and a review of CND’s Chocolate Milk, which was used in the Carolina Herrera Fall 2010 runway show.  I saw some pictures of it online and then threw it in with other CNDs in a Transdesign order a while ago, but hadn’t yet tried it.  In the bottle it’s a light creamy brown that has a more orange look than I expected.  When swatch pictures of the China Glaze Anchors Away Collection started popping up, I surprised myself by wanting Life Preserver, the deep orange.  Since Anchors Away wasn’t yet available, I pulled out Chocolate Milk.

The CND brush and formula are nice, but this color does seem a little thinner than some of the other CND colors-I used three coats for the swatches below.

CND Chocolate Milk
CND Chocolate Milk
CND Chocolate Milk - shade
CND Chocolate Milk - shade

This color is so pretty!  For me it’s a way more useful color than Life Preserver, since it’s lively but unquestionably work appropriate.  It looks caramel-y and brown in some lights and leans more pinkish or peachish in other lights.  It somehow manages to be really vibrant although it’s mostly a brown, which makes it seem like a perfect spring color to me.  In contrast to the browns and khaki colors we’ve had so much of throughout the fall, this doesn’t seem dark or quiet.  It reminded me a bit of Chanel’s Khaki Rose, only more punchy.  But then I swatched them next to each other, and discovered that my memory was misled by the word “Rose”.  They are nothing alike.  Khaki Rose is much more grey and brown.  Especially next to Chocolate Milk.  Khaki Rose is on the left and Chocolate Milk is on the right below:

Chanel Khaki Rose and CND Chocolate Milk
Chanel Khaki Rose and CND Chocolate Milk

I kept trying to figure out what it reminded me of, but I had a hard time.  Sometimes I thought it was a little bit like terra cotta, since it has that orangey look, or maybe like the slightly pinkish brown of amaretto.  Then when I was looking around my office, I noticed that it’s pretty close to “redweld”!  I think redwelds are a legal world thing, they’re big expandable file holders made of a thick, brownish red cardboard, with funny colors on the ends so that you can use different colors for different clients and then when you file them on a shelf you can easily see when the files switch to a different client.  Probably more than you wanted to know about lawyer filing methods.  But anyway, take a look, it’s kind of close:

CND Chocolate Milk w/ redweld
CND Chocolate Milk w/ redweld

So Chocolate Milk fits right in at my office!

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