Dior Amazonia and Golden Light

Today I've got two polishes from Christian Dior which were released as part of the Golden Jungle collection for Fall 2012. The first is Amazonia, a deep warm dusty green almost creme. Here's two coats, plus topcoat, which it did seem to need:





There is a very fine, very subtle shimmer in Amazonia. It didn't show up in the lightbox at all, and it wasn't sunny when I was swatching this, so the best I've got to show the shimmer is this half-shadow, half-flash shot (which I did before I decided to add topcoat):



Because the shimmer is so shy, when it came time to do comparisons, I picked two cremes, MAC Fatigues and Catrice Sir Yes Sir.



Left to right below—Dior, MAC, Dior, Catrice. The Catrice was two coats like the Dior; the MAC was three. (No topcoat.) The Dior is darker than the other two, but all have a similar khaki green look to them.



Flash enhances the differences (and confirms that the MAC and the Catrice are pretty near dupes to each other).



The second polish, which I bought mostly to keep Amazonia company since I thought it might be lonely with no companion from it's collection, is Golden Light. It's also known as Or Lumière (as shown on the bottle) and Golden Era (as shown on the Nordstrom website when I bought it) and Sparkling Bergamot (as shown on this Japanese blog); in any case, it's shade number 207. Since Amazonia is shade 505, I'm thinking this gold is a repromote, but as I've only been buying Dior polishes since early this year, I didn't have it already. I did have trouble getting it, though. When my order arrived from Nordstrom and I slipped the bottle of Golden Light out of its opaque Dior box, I found it was nearly empty. It hadn't leaked; there was no sign of polish on the outside of the bottle, in the Dior box, or on the Nordstrom packaging. Very curious. I filled out the return form and popped it back in the mail asking for a replacement.



About a week later, the replacement arrived. It looked like this:



Really? What are the chances? At this point, I didn't know if they'd gotten my return and just sent the same bottle back to me (I didn't think to mark it) or if there was a bad batch of bottles in the warehouse. This time I called to get an exchange. The third time was indeed the charm, as I got a full bottle. I have to give credit to Nordstorm; this process could have been a huge hassle, but with Nordstrom, it was pretty easy—I didn't have to pay for return shipping either time (or even print my own labels for the return boxes).

Golden Light is a sparkly pale gold shimmer with darker reddish gold flecks in it. It's on the sheer side; these swatches are three coats, and there's some definite VNL going on (Visible Nail Line).





Sheer as it is, I really should have tried Golden Light layered over Amazonia, but for some reason that didn't occur to me until I sat down today to write this post. Duh, me.



I am not as overstocked in gold polishes as I am in many other categories, but of course I went ahead and did a comparison anyway. I chose Borghese Trevi Gold and Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Infinity Band, as those two seemed closest to Golden Light based on a flip through my nail wheels.



Left to right below—Dior, Borghese, Dior, Sally Hansen. The Sally Hansen is two coats; the others are three. No dupes here; the Dior is more delicate and sheer and has a flecked shimmer finish rather than the metallic/foil of the other two. Maybe I should have looked at my layering topcoat wheels for comparison candidates rather than my gold wheels.



There are other polishes that came out with the Golden Jungle collection, but I missed them and don't feel like paying inflated Amazon seller/eBay prices right now. There's Bengale, a warm brown creme (or almost creme, I'm not sure) that I believe was a Neiman Marcus exclusive in the U.S. market, and a duo consisting of a gold foil polish (not Golden Light) and a croc effect crackle topper in a color similar to Amazonia. Since Dior is not sold in any of the retail establishments I frequent, I have a harder time keeping up with their stuff than other brands that I see more frequently. Ah well, they're pricey, so the more I miss, the more money I have left in my budget to spend on other things.