Les Roses Ultimes de Chanel Collection, Swatches and Review

A post from my archive and another few polishes ticked off for my Chanel challenge today. Les Roses Ultimes de Chanel was released outside of the main seasonal collections and included four new polishes - Tentation, Distraction, Frisson and Attraction. When I visited the Chanel Pop-Up shop at Covent Garden (see my post here) I picked up three of the four polishes, swatches and review after the jump.



Chanel Le Vernis Tentation, Distraction and Frisson



OPI Holland Collection - Swatches and Review

I've been somewhat slack recently on posting for one reason and one reason only...the Olympics were in London! I've been glued to my TV firmly clutching my Team GB flag throughout and I’ve also been lucky enough to go to a few events, with appropriately themed nails which I will be doing a post on soon but I've been a bit of a slow coach catching up on my other posts.

Anyway making a tenuous segue to a post on archive polishes today featuring OPI's Holland collection for Spring/Summer 2012. The Holland collection is one of their traditional collections themed around destinations. If you were supporting the Netherlands in the Olympics you were royally spoilt for choice with this collection. They seemed to go with pretty classic (and possibly a smidge stereotypical?) Dutch imagery – it feels very wind and water inspired with nods to windmills, tulips, cheese, canals and errr...Amsterdam nightlife in shade and name selection.

 

OPI Holland - Edited highlights (taken with Instagram)

Overall I really liked the shade selection in this collection but I only picked up four shades ( I Have a Herring Problem, Dutch Ya' Just Love OPI, I Don't give a Rotterdam and Wooden Shoe like to know) which are swatched below the break. I've also added a little bit about what I look for when picking out which shades to get as I'm interested to see how you guys make your choices.

Chanel Delight and Holiday Le Vernis - Swatches and Review

Chanel Le Vernis in Delight and Holiday

 These two are from a trio of polishes that are part of the Summertime de Chanel collection that’s currently in stores. The third polish in this collection is a shimmery pink beige called Island which is pretty but a very sheer pearly neutral so it wasn’t really for me. There are apparently dupes for these out there but clearly I have no self control so couldn’t resist!The collection was inspired by the summer sun and the colour palette definitely fits with that image. Neutrals, bronze-golds and orange brights are perfect summer desert island shades. I thought I’d only go for Holiday when I saw the promo pics but Delight was lovely too so I ended up getting both.  

Chanel Delight Le Vernis

Delight is like Graphite’s lighter bronze-gold little sister, it has that same super sparkly but non-gritty formula. Application with these kind of Chanel shades is a dream, really smooth with a perfect finish. This was only two coats but it's completely opaque. The base is a shimmery warm champagne gold with a hefty whack of bronze microglitter. It makes me think of sandy beaches and sunshine, definitely a beautiful summer shade. It has a similar base to Chanel Diwali (as reviewed here - Chanel Diwali) but Diwali has silvery glitter in place of Delight's warmer bronze tone. They are part of the same family but they are distinct shades so no dupes there. 

Chanel Le Vernis in Holiday

Apologies for the difference in photos here, I took this photo before I had my new camera and the Delight photo after so you'll  have to bear with my super pale zombie skin tone! Holiday is a bright medium orange that has a slight jelly feel. Application on this one was good too, this was three coats and dried to a great glossy finish. It's more opaque than the OPI Texas sorbet finish shades but it has a very definite jelly squishiness to it. I personally think it's great that Chanel decided to go with such different finishes for this collection. Chanel Island, the third shade in the trio is different again with more of a pearly frost finish. Whilst I loved April, May and June having three cremes in a collection wasn't the most interesting range ever. Chanel Holiday is a perfect, bright, beach pedicure colour and it's jelly feel makes it more unique among Chanel's so I think it's worth picking up too.

Overall I love both of these so should you be lucky enough to be going somewhere other than the UK that's hot and sunny, pack these two for your perfect holiday nails duo. If you are coming the UK I'd recommend something more wet weather...possibly Illamasqua Raindrops...we're getting a lot of that at the moment....

OPI Reflecting Pool



OPI Reflecting Pool



Japan/UK Exclusive from the Reflection Glitters Collection (circa 2009 ish). Weirdly this was the first OPI I ever owned, found in a random chemist in a dusty corner all on its own. 

It’s one of my favourite OPIs, perfect smooth formula with icy teal-blue teeny micro glitter and larger gold micro glitter.This was two coats, it's not opaque at one but builds nicely.

It’s a great winter colour rather than the classic vampy dark shades, feels like the kind of thing the White Witch from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would wear. It was a limited edition but has a famous dupe in Zoya Crystal so you can get that if you can’t find this one.