Essie Fall 2012 Stylenomics Collection

There's something so familiar and comfortable about Essie that I find myself buying them even when I'm 95% sure I have dupes at home, as I was with the six cremes in the Stylenomics collection. The bottles are so pleasingly symmetrical and space efficient to store. The brushes are a classic shape; no giant paddles or mops here. The formula is usually very well behaved.


Left to right: Miss Fancy Pants, Don't Sweater It, Head Mistress, Skirting the Issue, Recessionista, Stylenomics.
Miss Fancy Pants is a greyish taupe on the lighter end of the value range. I used two coats plus topcoat for this swatch.



The closest things I could find in my stash were L'Oreal Eiffel for You and Borghese Arrivederci Mist.



Left to right below: Eiffel for You (2 coats), Miss Fancy Pants, Arrivederci Mist (3 coats); all have topcoat. The L'Oreal is pretty much a dupe for the Essie; the Borghese is a touch lighter.



Don't Sweater It is a medium taupe creme. I used two coats; no topcoat because my patience with putting that on swatches ran out at this point in the swatching session.



I have many many taupes, so picking two for comparisons was difficult. I settled on Sally Hansen Nailgrowth Miracle Fearless Fog and Sonia Kashuk Tauped.



Left to right below: Fearless Fog, Don't Sweater It, Tauped (all two coats). While there are very slight differences in the amount of purple/grey in these, any one would be a good substitute for the others.



Essie Head Mistress is a red creme. I used three coats of this one, though I probably could have stopped at two.



Since Essie has done so many red cremes over the years, I had to pull one of those for my comparison; I chose A-List because it was one of the first Essie reds I ever bought. I also pulled Cult Nails Quench, as that's a classic red, too, just from a smaller, newer brand.



Left to right below: A-List, Head Mistress, Quench (all three coats). Head Mistress is perhaps a touch darker than A-List, and Quench is a bit darker even than that, but the differences are slight.



Skirting the Issue is a deep red wine. I used three coats. I found this one more challenging to clean up than the lighter colors; if I'd been wearing this for a full mani, I would have been more careful and tried harder.



Vampy reds like this abound in the nail polish world, so it wasn't hard to find comparison subjects. I grabbed China Glaze Velvet Bow and Orly Grave Mistake.



Left to right below: Velvet Bow, Skirting the Issue, Grave Mistake (all three coats). The China Glaze and the Essie are very close; the Orly is touch less dark.



Recessionista is a deep plummy color between purple and red. This was a two-coater.



For comparison, I pulled Rescue Beauty Lounge Bruised and OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ.



Left to right below: Bruised, Recessionista, Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ. The Essie is a bit lighter than the RBL, and both lighter and more purple than the OPI. In a darkish room, though, I bet no one could tell them apart.



Stylenomics is a very deep teal-leaning green. I used two coats.



Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Blackboard and Maybelline Express Finish Grand in Green were the two closest matches in my stash. The Maybelline is actually a shimmer, but it's a subtle one, so I decided it could join the cremes for this exercise.



Left to right below: Blackboard, Stylenomics, Grand in Green. All were two coats. The Essie is the darkest of these, though it's not by much.



Here's an angle on Grand in Green where you can see its shimmer.



So yeah, there's nothing screamingly unique in this collection. It's mostly good, solid classic cremes, with the deep green added for edginess. (Not edgy to us lacquer lovers, of course, but to the vast majority of the polish buying public, I think it probably is. I read an article calling Michelle Obama's purpley grey nails at the DNC "unconventional", which made me chuckle.) That said, if I ever manage to destash and undupe like I plan to do someday so I don't have to keep buying more storage, I bet a lot of Essies are going to make the cut on the basis of their bottle, brush, and formula.