Product Review: Essie Nail Polish

Essie nail polish has been making itself known lately. I first noticed them earlier in the year when I had to start paying attention to magazine advertisements for school. After taking an Advertising & Promotion Management class (and getting a B!) I can’t help paying attention to and analyzing ads now. Essie’s got advertisements everywhere. You can find their ads on about every other page of every magazine that has anything to do with beauty and/or fashion. I was interested in trying their polish but when I noticed that it was nearly $8 per tiny-sized bottle I became skeptical. At least with OPI you get a decent amount of product for your money. Normally I’m just not willing to pay that much for nailpolish. Unless it’s Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure… because that stuff is awesome. HOWEVER, when Kate Middleton (I mean, Duchess Catherine) wore Essie in her wedding I figured it had to be good. Either that or they had to spend a ton of money to get her to do so. Whatever the reason may be, it made me want to try the brand. Lucky for Essie I’m very easily influenced by celebrities. I even went to Wal-Mart intending to buy the same Allure shade that Kate wore, but when I got there I realized it was a little to pale for my taste. Maybe she felt the same since she blended it with something else. So I tried a couple shades pinker and bought Limo Scene (their shade names are clever, right? they have one called After Sex that I want to try…).

The polish color turned out to be a little whiter than I imagined it but I still really liked it. And the consistency of the polish itself is really nice. It’s super shiny on it’s own even before a top coat and it dries quicker than most nail polishes. The only issue is the size of the bottle, and also the fact that I like my nails to be pretty bold. I’m guessing that the Limo Scene color was made for someone who prefers more natural looking nails, because I had to use 4 coats to get the shade to look the way I wanted it to, which makes the bottle go by really quickly and in the end not really worth it for $8. The darker shade only took the typical two coats so I definitely felt like it was worth it. If you’re going to do your nails a lighter shade I would recommend going with a cheaper brand, but for a darker shade Essie makes great polish! I ended up going back and buying another shade called Angora Cardi which is a maroon-ish color and pictured below.

Here are a couple pictures of how my nails turned out… please ignore the sloppy manicure! That’s what you get when your hands shake like you’re elderly. From a distance you can’t notice I promise :)

  

-Liv