Essie French Affair...the nudes (incl. swatches)!

Time for the...more literal beauty blog posts to resume! :)

This will be my little review on 3 of the 6 nail polishes featured in Essie's "French Affair" spring collection - the 3 lighter colours (or non-colours) to be more specific.

Now, as some of you may already know, I've been looking for a good nude nail polish for ages, a task which has proven to be much lengthier than anticipated - you see there are as many definitions of "nude" as there are skintones. And naturally, when I saw that Essie was offering a couple of new fleshy toned nail polishes for spring, I simply couldn't resist! As for the rest of the collection, I decided against them - you see, I'm not usually one for pinks and lilacs and the blue one seemed fairly dupable in my eyes.

So, let me present you with Sand Tropez, Kisses&Bises and Topless&Barefoot from left to right respectively. Let's take a closer look:

Essie Sand Tropez is described as a soft sandy beige, and while that works, I'd say it's more of a light grey beige creme to me (read: greige). Those types of shades are a bit tricky to pull off (especially on my skintone), as they can wash one out (that's if they don't make your nails look dirty), but I feel that this is just the right level of interesting without being offensive. Swatch taken after 2 coats, application was perfect at the second one.

Essie Kisses&Bises is a pearlescent pink duochrome. The pink shimmer in it is less cool (purple) toned than it appears in the photo and provides a metallic effect. It's definitely only a top coat though, the swatch above was after 3 coats and still nowhere near achieving opaqueness. But good for layering, if that's what you're looking for.

Essie Topless&Barefoot needs no references, as I'm sure many of you are already well familiar with it. It's a nude pink beige shade and is probably the closest "fleshy" toned nude I've seen in a while! But while the colour is perfectly executed, the application could have been a little better: it was just a tiny bit streakier than Sand Tropez, to the point that I was tempted to add a third coat, but decided to leave it at 2 for the swatches (nothing like the mess of last year's Van D' Go though, that's for sure)! You can certainly go with 2 coats if you're careful while painting your nails, so all's well! ;)

So, did I find my ideal nude in this collection? Well, no, but that's only because I'm looking for a light jelly finish in a nude nail polish! The two neutral shades are great light cremes and the shimmery dual toned pink makes for a great finishing coat! Overall very pleased with what I purchased and I'll be surely wearing these a lot this spring, since those shades are all the rage right now!

So, have you shopped from this collection?

And what is your go-to "nude" nail polish?