DISCLAIMER: Products were provided for review by Polished London. I did not receive any monetary compensation for this review and the views expressed are solely my own.
What?? I swear I hit publish on this when I finished writing but apparently not eh. :(
Guess who loves a good nail polish. You? Oh snap, me too!
When I got an email about Polished London's new runway inspired spring/summer collection, I had to get on board. I received High Street, a dark purple navy (yep, another purple... why do I do this to myself?) and Union Black, a crackle topcoat. The brand promises a hard wearing, superiorly glossed, quick drying one coater with a 4 free formulation, so how could I say no?
one, two, three, of course
One coater? Sad to say, but High Street is not that. Boo! However, it's got great coverage by two. The formula itself is touch dry within 5 minutes, but still remains dentable with another fingernail for roughly 3 hours. I've never encountered a formula like this before, but a quick dry topcoat helps to solve the problem. Gloss is great if you manage not to bash anything against your nails.
The real winner here for me is the longevity. I put it through a 5 day test, resuming my regular duties of typing a whole damn lot (also, washing the dishes in hot, soapy water.)
...Look at that! Index and middle finger are 2 coats, no topcoat, and ring is 3 coats with ORLY Sec'n'Dry. Wear is exactly the same and usually by day 2 without a top coat it's chips galore because I tend to scratch at everything/use my nails to open cans and pry stuff oven/drum on tables a lot, but all we have here is a little on on my index. Woo hoo! I think this is due to the fact that that the polish creates a thick, jelly-like film over the nail.
Union Black is your basic black crackle. It's every bit as opaque as a black should be but the size of the brush leads to less polish being picked up, which leads to a more splintered effect rather than big crackley bits which isn't a bad thing. Compare to
OPI Turquoise Shatter, which has a much larger brush. Pictured on ring finger over ORLY Gumdrop. Wore over Chanel Peridot at work though (no top coat) and it has a tendency to fade off if in contact with perfume very often as I found that it turned into gradient effect on my middle/pointer fingers which mainl get hit when I am spraiyng perfume onto cards.
I do like
Polished London and wholeheartedly recommend them, but only if you have a good fast dry top coat on hand.
