Thursday, September 29, 2011

My Go-To Red: OPI O'Hare & Nails Look Great!

OPI O'Hare & Nails Look Great
While I love pink (as longtime readers will know - remember my old blog and Twitter layouts?), I don't look that great in it.  My power colour is red.  My philosophy is to
own pink things but to wear red, and every so often, I need my vampy red nail polish fix. 

I'd been on the lookout for the perfect red for a while because, as you know, nail polishes look different under different kinds of lighting.  The ideal would be to find one that appears true red in every lighting but that is impossible - so my goal was to look for a red that is flattering to my skin tone in every lighting and true red in good lighting.

Because  I have a medium skin tone with the slightest hint of olive, regular bright reds don't work for me.  I used to wear Essie's Really Red, but I've found it to be too bright and too yellow (and too thin - it's slightly transparent even after 2-3 coats).  I need bright reds that are really rich and slightly on the dark side.  Most people say that Asians look best in orange reds but I've found that to be false for me - orange reds make me look too, um, me-love-you-long-time. And blue-reds look good on me, but only bright reds can hit the spot when I want Red, Red Nails.

I tried OPI's Malaga Wine, more for the glamourous, romantic name than anything (I'm a huge sucker for clever cosmetics monikers and have totally bought products that were not right for me just because I loved their names), which was pretty in sunlight but appeared way too dark otherwise.  For a while I was pretty happy with OPI's The Thrill of Brazil, but for some reason, I've never purchased it.  Something about it just didn't click.

And then I tried OPI O'Hare & Nails Look Great - and bingo!  I hit the jackpot.  It was exactly what I was looking for and it was perfect.  It's a rich, bright, true red in sunlight (above) and halogen lighting, and in crappy lighting (i.e. office fluorescent, home energy-saving bulbs), it's a dark, almost blood red.  It's sexy and provocative and oh, did I mention that it applies like a dream?  It self-levels so beautifully, it goes on perfectly smoothly, and it's perfectly opaque in just two coats.  LOVE.

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