Essie A French Affair Collection Spring 2011 Swatches

Introducing Essie’s A French Affair Collection for Spring 2011, and whilst I’m well aware Spring has not yet hit Australia, at the encouragement of some lovely beauty bloggers I decided to swatch them anyways~

This collection is made out of 4 pure crèmes and 2 crèmes with micro-shimmers. Mostly very conservative, pastel colours that would suit almost any person in my opinion. The colour just feel so dainty and feminine, despite the streakiness that some of them gave me, I actually really enjoyed this collection. These colours are ones I can see myself personally using a lot.

As always, each swatch is 3 coats without any top coat unless otherwise mentioned.

Kisses & Bises

A sheer opal polish, I was very tempted to mention the micro-shimmers, but maybe these are micro micro shimmers since the formula looks incredibly smooth upon application. If you check out the bottle itself, you can kinda see small hardly there flecks.

Worn on it’s own, not so amazing, but this would look great on a more opaque polish to add that opal like quality to it.

Topless & Barefoot

A soft tanned nude shade, with a hint of pink. Gorgeous colour that I would love to wear more often, my only complaint is that the formula is very streaky 🙁 The only way I could avoid the streakiness was to apply 3 coats or go with 2 thick coats.

So generally I’d only recommend this polish to people who are “well versed” with polishes? Not for the polish beginner for sure.

Nice is Nice

A light lavender polish, with an amazing formula. I was surprised since the other crèmes in this collection proved to be rather streaky, but this was the exception, it applied amazingly well! It’s almost pink, quiet close to French Affair only with a more purple hue and in my opinion there fore more wearable.

Coat Azure

A medium blue colour with silver micro shimmers, this is the pop of colour this collection needed, but I feel like maybe the blue is too saturated? I’d have probably preferred a softer blue, just to match the pastel like theme of this collection, but on it’s own this blue is gorgeous. I only needed to apply 2 coats for this swatch because it’s very pigmented.

Kisses & Bises and Coat Azure are the only non-cremes from this collection, I took a close up shot of the bottle so you can better see the silver shimmers scattered throughout this formula.

French Affair

An almost soft bubblegum pink, like Topless & Barefoot it is very streaky upon application and is better suited to those used to their polishes. It’s a lovely pink to add to the collection, I’m not exactly sure this is something I would wear on a daily basis though, it might be just a tad bright for me and personally out of the entire collection, this is probably the only colour I wouldn’t reach for. Just don’t think it compliments my skin tone very well.

Sand Tropez

A tanned brownish nude, it’s like a darker version of Topless & Barefoot and fortunately is not as streaky, though it’s not incredible easy to work with either. I would love to wear this colour to work, a great conservative shade for those not too keen on attention grabbing colours.