Lady Like is the fourth polish from Essie’s Brand New Bag Collection, and the last one that is widely available through retail outlets, that I hadn’t yet reviewed.  It’s a murky greyish pink creme that’s very muted and pretty.  Swatches coming up!

Essie’s Brand New Bag Collection is appearing at some Walgreens now, but only four of the colors are widely available, as was the case for Essie’s French Affair Collection this spring.  There were eventually some of the other other two French Affair colors floating around (just the other day I found a Kisses and Bises stuck into the regular Essie display in the wrong spot!) but most displays only had four of the colors.  So I’m hoping that the same is true for Brand New Bag, and eventually the other two colors (Glamour Purse and Very Structured) pop up on the retail side.

I already reviewed the first three colors from Brand New Bag here-these plus Lady Like make up the Brand New Bag display in most retail outlets.  Lady Like is the lightest and softest of the colors, and would almost seem springy if it didn’t have so much grey to tone it down.  This polish went on well just like the other three colors I’ve tried from the collection, and took only two coats to be opaque.  I like that it’s a bit like a mannequin hands shade, but darker, and has a light mauve tone as well.  It’s the fall version of the whiter nudes from Essie’s spring collection, Sand Tropez and Topless and Barefoot.

This picture is the most accurate to the color I saw while wearing it-it’s darker than my skintone and has a slight lavender cast that takes it out of nude territory.  It leans warm and gives just a hint of color – I think it will be a good work polish for the fall.

It’s very similar in tone to Essie’s Demure Vixen, from the Summer 2010 Collection.  In the picture below, Lady Like is on my index and middle fingers and Demure Vixen is on my ring and pinky.  These two looked more different in person, but in my pictures they ended up looking almost the same.  Demure Vixen is lighter and looks a bit more pink on the nail, and of course it has that slight hidden shimmer of purplish-pink that zings out everyone once in a while.  I think Demure Vixen is hard to capture accurately because the shimmer is so fine and almost hidden.  By comparison, Lady Like is darker and more somber, and has a greyer tone.

That’s the last of my Essie Brand New Bag polishes for now.  Barring a lucky find in a drugstore soon, I’m planning to pick up the other two polishes in their salon incarnations so that I can try them out–I need that orange!

Update: In addition to this post and my first Essie Fall 2011 Review (Case Study, Power Clutch, and Carry On), I also tracked down and reviewed the last two of the collection: Glamour Purse and Very Structured.

Check them both out to see the entire Essie Brand New Bag Collection.