Essie’s 2011 Resort Collection is available now at salons, although it doesn’t seem to be sold through the retail channels (like WalGreens or WalMart) at this point. It’s an earthy, soft collection of four shades-swatches coming up!
Essie’s resort collections are often less traditional than the seasonal collections, but this year’s resort collection is pretty tame. It includes two pinks, along with a grey and a green. Essie’s brush is small and medium-stiff, and I’ve been really liking the Essie brush lately-I prefer it over the OPI and Dior brushes because they’re so wide that I find them hard to control sometimes.
Fair Game
I decided to start with my favorite of this whole collection, Fair Game. This polish is a soft, bluish grey with heavy, fine silver shimmer. It’s a little bit more blue in person than it photographed, and it’s dusky and pretty. The shimmer is so heavy and fine that it almost looks like a metallic, but dries with almost no brushstrokes and is more subtle than a traditional metallic. It reminded me of the shimmer in Chanel’s Black Pearl. In fact, from early pictures I thought this polish might be too close to Black Pearl to need both, but they’re not really the same at all. Fair Game’s bluish tone makes it relaxed and it’s much lighter than I expected it would be. It took three coats for this opacity, but it went on well.
Da Bush
Next I tried Da Bush. Many have commented on this name; I can only agree that it’s just not great. It’s kind of, ew. The color is a murky, light green with a lot of yellow and grey, so it’s soft and muted. It’s a nice creamy formula that only took two coats. It doesn’t create weird redness issues for my skintone, a plus.
The big question about Da Bush (other than, what bush??) is how it compares to OPI’s Stranger Tides. These two polishes are strikingly similar in the bottle, and appear to be almost the same color. I painted Stranger Tides on my ring and pinky fingers below, and you can see that when dry on the nail Stranger Tides is a bit more yellow and lighter, while Da Bush has a slightly darker and more bluish tone. I like the OPI better, since it’s just a little more yellow-murky and edgy. The differences are pretty slight, though, so if they weren’t painted right next to each other it would be hard to tell them apart.
Lion Around
The two pinks in the collection are also nice–I like that both of them have a shimmery, interesting finish. Lion Around is a light, peachy pink that’s a tiny bit greyish, not too bright. It has a heavy, fine shimmer of silvery white that makes it more interesting, although the shimmer isn’t as apparent as the shimmer in Fair Game. This one also took just two coats and had a nice, creamy formula. It’s blushy and subtle, but still kind of fun.
Your Hut or Mine
The last color is Your Hut or Mine. This one is a rosy, reddish pink with more chunky pink shimmers. There’s a hint of gold around the edges when the light hits the shimmers, especially in the bottle, but it didn’t come out that much on the nail. It took two coats for opacity, and also had a nice, creamy formula. It reminds me of summer flowers and is a nice, not-too-bright color that I think will be good for office wear. It’s also subtle but the shimmer adds a little something extra.
When I painted it on the slightly gold shimmer reminded me of Chanel’s Morning Rose, and the color itself reminded me of In Stitches from Essie’s Fall 2010 Collection. So I pulled them out to compare, and found that it’s kind of right in between those two–In Stitches is on my index finger, Morning Rose is on middle finger and Your Hut Or Mine is on my ring and pinky fingers. Your Hut Or Mine seems to be what you’d get if you mixed the others together. It’s a lighter and brighter pink than In Stitches but has more red than Morning Rose.
Overall these four colors make a nice set, and I’m happy with their softness and shimmer. They’ll be pretty colors to reach for over the summer. Most of the colors aren’t exactly striking or unique, but they’re done well and apply so nicely that they still warrant a look. Fair Game seems the most special to me, and I can’t think of any other color just like it–it’s like the summer version of the heavier, winter greys we saw last fall.
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