CND has a new collection that was just recently released-a set of four polishes and one topcoat that is a collaboration with Jason Wu.  This set of polishes was gifted to attendees of Jason Wu’s Spring 2011 runway show back in September of 2010, and when pictures came out I fell in love with the dark red color, Veronica.  I decided to keep all of the swatches of this collection together for references purposes, so this is going to be a huge post!

The CND Jason Wu colors are all beautiful and classic, and can all be worn to the office.  But at the same time, they all have a modern, well-chosen edge.  After wearing all of these, I can report that the formula on these is really amazing.  All four of the polishes took only two coats to be opaque and dried lightning fast.  I like the CND brush, too-it’s on the wide side, but it’s a bit thinner and stiffer than OPI’s brush, which I prefer.  I’m impressed by the consistency of these colors.

I started with Miss Wu, which is described as a warm limestone grey that dries matte.  It was a custom mix used in a prior Jason Wu show, and I love that we now have it in bottled form without all the work of mixing different colors.  It has some shimmer, so it dries with a slight sheen despite being matte.  This dried so fast and was so easy to apply, I could see it being a go-to when there’s some sort of packing/early presentation/watched-too-much-tv-late-at-night emergency.  The flatness of the color makes it slightly unexpected and different from all of the light greys we’ve had so much of lately.  This is actually my first matte polish, and it’s making me think I need to look into mattes a bit more.  So many are too out there or too trendy (Zoya Mod Mattes!  Revlon Emerald City!) that they just didn’t seem that useful to me.  But this is really nice.

 

Next up is Brigitte.  This looks pink in the bottle, but once it’s painted on it really reminded me of China Glaze’s Below Deck.  I don’t think they’re actually that close, since Below Deck is more brown and darker, but they give me the same feeling.  I really liked how mauve this looked, but it’s lighter and more fleshy than most other colors like this.  It’s like a fresh and springy version of Essie’s Angora Cardi.

I broke out the Anna topcoat with this one.  Anna is a clear polish with bits of fiber in it, intended to give a tweed effect on the nail.  There’s been a lot of complaint about it-a common objection is that one doesn’t want to purposefully make it look like one smushed their nails onto their sheets.  I wonder a bit why the threads aren’t colored-I would think it would make it more evident that it’s an intentional effect rather than a mess-up.  But I found that I liked this anyway.  I used two coats to make sure that the texture was really strong, and I think that you do get a sweater-y, fabric look from this topcoat.  It changes the shine and reflection of the polish.  It’s definitely unique.

Sophia is a brown-taupe with a lot of grey.  I thought I would not like this since it’s very similar to a lot of other colors, and I always think that these colors end up more dark and brown on me than I hope.  I did like this one, too, though.  They grey tones are very strong and it’s a great neutral, and it’s hard not to award extra points for the lovely application.  It makes me more likely to reach for it over similar colors.

 

I also tried two coats of Anna over this color, and I found the effect was even more pronounced over this slightly darker polish.  I like the fuzzy look it gives, it’s different from anything else I’ve seen.

When I was wearing Sophia I kept thinking, “but I have so many of this color!”, so I pulled out a few suspects to compare: Essie Hot Coco and Rescue Beauty Decorous.  They didn’t really seem that close, and this picture is with really poor light because just as I finished painting these swatches the sky clouded up and rained.  Even so, you can see that these are not the same.  Hot Coco is on my pinky and is more red, Decorous is on my ring finger and has a yellow/caramel cast, and Sophia is on my middle and ring fingers.  I know that even my middle and ring fingers don’t look exactly the same, but you can see that both are more grey than the others.  Sigh.

The final polish is the one that really piqued my interest, Veronica.  It was used on the runway in Jason Wu’s Spring 2011 runway show, and it’s a slightly darkened red with both brown and blue undertones.  It was interesting to wear this after so many pastels and spring colors, because it felt a bit funny-I kept feeling like I had weird winter hands.  The finish seems almost like a jelly since it’s a bit squishy, but it’s very opaque and went on evenly.  I still used only two coats of this polish.   It reminds me of velvet and Christmas, such a pretty color.  But I don’t think I’ll be pulling it out again until later in the year.

 

That is, of course, unless I add some Kisses and Bises.  This polish is so great, I’ve never been disappointed with any combination of Kisses and Bises and another polish.  It’s a red/fuchsia pearl from Essie’s Spring 2011 collection, and it’s gorgeous.  It made Veronica into a hot, springy fuchsia with a hint of duochrome.

These pictures show two coats of Kisses and Bises.  In the shade, you can see the heavy shimmer it gives–it changes the feel of the polish entirely.

 

The CND Jason Wu collection is available now from CND’s partner site and from Transdesign.