Essie - Lapis Of Luxury

So I thought I'd try another Essie after the last one was such a trouble-maker... (Also the weather was still WAY too overcast to really show off any more of 'The Legends'). This time I tried Essie's 'Lapis Of Luxury' from the 2010 Resort Collection...

Isn't it beautiful! 'Lapis Of Luxury' is a gorgeous periwinkle, verging on cornflower, blue.

I've spent so much time just staring at this colour on my nails. It's a very wearable blue. Bright and happy but not too out-there. I suddenly realised, while I was typing this, that this is the exact colour of the 1st and 2nd year classical uniform from when I was training as a dancer! (The colour of the uniform was called 'Lunar Blue').

In this photo, taken with a flash, the blue really comes through and everything appears to soften slightly.

In shade, 'Lapis Of Luxury' becomes more saturated and slightly more purple leaning.


In whatever light this polish is in, it always looks so pretty. If only the formula were so fantastic... Once again Essie has been a toughie formula-wise. This polish was so thin! This is 4 coats and on some fingers it's still very sheer. I had to really coax this onto my nails and it took a huge amount of effort to make it even look halfway decent. If you are not into taking a long time to do your nails, maybe this isn't right for you. If you don't mind that, then definitely get this beauty! In saying all this, I have read a lot of reviews for this polish and most say how fantastic the formula is - 2 easy coats. I'm just wondering whether perhaps my Essie polishes weren't stored well before they got to me? Who knows. All I know is that I am loving this colour so much that I don't care how hard it is to apply, I will definitely wear it lots more. I think next time I will try fewer slightly thicker coats and see how that goes.

Just as a quick side-note... I have noticed a fair amount of  confusion on the internet as to the name of this beauty. My bottle certainly is called Lapis Of Luxury but some insist the name is Lapiz Of Luxury. I've hunted around and found the answer... When Wal-Mart got the Essie range, they decided they needed to change a bunch of the names (including Lapis Of Luxury) to be more "family-friendly". For a bit more about this silliness, have a look at this blog.