Today I have swatches of Dior’s new summer polishes.  These are part of the Electric Tropics Collection, and there’s a very bright orange and a very bright pink.  What really made these have-to-buys for me is the bottle-it’s tinted orange or pink depending on the color, and the packaging is sort of ravishing.

These colors are only available as a special package.  Each comes in a pretty, double-wide silver box that includes a topcoat in the same size bottle, and a little instruction sheet.  The bottle of polish itself is tinted (either orange or pink, both so pretty), and the idea seems to be that the polish pigment is so bright that it needs to be protected from light.  It feels so methodical, and fussy in the best sort of way.  The topcoat is quick drying but is very different from most quick-dry topcoats because it’s very thin and runny, sort of like the Essie basecoat I’m using now (Rock Solid from WalGreen’s).  But it also dries very quickly to a high shine, so it works well.  The brush is the usual more recent Dior brush that is flat, very wide and rounded at the end.  It always takes a slight getting used to for me, but it does cover the nail quickly.

I swatched Aloha first.  It’s getting the most interest, and seems to be the one that most people buy if they only buy one of these.  It’s really great-it turned out more orange in my pictures than in real life, partly I think because of the brightness.  It’s a very bright but not neon orange color, that applies thinly but took only two coats to be very opaque. It’s more red in real life than in my pictures.  Two coats plus the thin topcoat left me with a fully opaque manicure that felt thinner and more flexible than normal.  It’s so bright and summery, and it feels like a lot of thought went into these.

The color is ever so slightly sheer here, but I didn’t notice any visible nail line when I was wearing the polish.  I think it’s a function of the strong light in the picture.

In my shade picture you can see the depth of the color more.  It’s really fiery and shiny.

I also tried Paradise.  I found this to be a difficult polish, although I think part of the problem is that it’s camera-shy, and would be much more compliant in normal wear.  It’s a really bright pink, but not exactly neon–it’s a warm and sort of classic summertime very bright pink.  Paradise is more sheer than Aloha, so I could see my nail line even in normal lighting with this color.  I still liked it when I wore it, but it photographed very poorly.  The color sort of washed out and also is even more sheer in these pictures than I felt it seemed when I was just looking at my own fingers.  I really liked this color!  But these pictures are not great.  I would recommend picking it up anyway, since it comes with a bottle of the topcoat and is packaged so nicely, and it’s still bright and pretty in person, even if it’s a bit more sheer than Aloha.

Just as a note, I wish we could buy the topcoat that came with these polishes by itself.  It dried very quickly, but was perfectly thin and almost oily, very easy to work with compared to other, normally goopy quick-dry topcoats.  There’s a topcoat listed on the Dior website, but I have the impression that it’s a different product.  The website and packaging don’t really specify which topcoat is included with the Electric Tropics, but I’m kind of hoping that will be made clearer at some point?  I would definitely buy this topcoat on its own, I really liked the texture and the way it applied so thinly without any streaks.