Not too prim and proper

I don’t do conservative. I do casual, I do edgy, sometimes I would even do trendy. But I just don’t do prim and proper.

Or so I thought.

Neutral? Milk-tea brown? Office-appropriate?! This doesn’t look like something I’d wear.

Yet, I did. And I loved it.

I know this blog is starting to look like a Rescue Beauty Lounge blog, but I can’t help it. Who would have thought I’d end up loving something as understated as this?

Decorous is part of Rescue Beauty Lounge’s Iconic/Ironic collection for spring, a cornucopia of trends and shades that can be mixed, matched, shaken and stirred depending on the mood and the occasion. Well, maybe not shaken and stirred, but you know what I mean.

It’s a creamy light brown set off with the finest pink shimmer that gives it a nice depth and prevents it from being just a boring neutral.

As pretty as it is, though, by the end of the week, I started wanting a new look. I didn’t necessarily want to change my nail polish just yet because Decorous still looked perfect. I just needed to give it an edge, to take it from workweek to weekend.

Fortunately, I had this:

Deborah Lippmann Today Was a Fairy Tale.

Here’s the thing: I love glitter. I own a few bottles of glitter nail polish but I hesitate from buying more because removal is such a pain in the ass. After wearing Tony Moly Jupiter once and taking almost an hour to remove it, I stayed far away from glitter-saturated polish unless they weren’t too chunky and came in a bottle of color I really liked. (RBL Under the Stars and Black Russian come to mind.)

Lippmann’s glitter polish, though? I’d been ogling them for months. Some days, I would stop by Rustan’s after work just to stare at them. I almost came close to buying a few times, too. Almost, but not quite. Until very recently, when I was coming up with a Christmas party outfit and decided that I just had to have blinged out nails. So I bought Today Was a Fairy Tale and Across the Universe.

Today Was a Fairy Tale transformed Decorous.

The silvery-blue glitter turned a chic, sophisticated, office-appropriate nail color into something glamorous.

It’s like a disco ball exploded and rained glitter all over my nails.

Despite its chunkiness, removal was relatively quick and painless. Even the hexagon glitter that clung to the nail surface came off without much work.

Decorous is available at Rescue Beauty Lounge for USD18. Deborah Lippmann is available at Rustan’s The Beauty Source; Today Was a Fairy Tale is PHP825.

Night and dying embers

It feels like it’s been ages since Rescue Beauty Lounge released its pre-fall Firebird collection for pre-order. Last week, I finally got my package which contained Pizzicato, Piú Mosso and Decorous. (Thanks to Digital Traincase for arranging a group pre-order for RBL fans in Manila.)

This was the first thing I tore into:

Rescue Beauty Lounge Piú Mosso. For me, this is the star of the collection.

And why not? Blue is my favorite color. And looking at the bottle, I thought Piú Mosso just might become my favorite nail polish.

The Firebird collection is inspired by Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, “L’Oisseau de Feu.” The four shades in the collection are named for musical techniques. Ommorphia Beauty Bar has an excellent review which includes a summary of the Firebird story and the musical definitions of the polish names.

The polish colors themselves take their inspiration from the colors of a darkening sky upon the approach of a storm.

RBL owner Ji Baek describes Piú Mosso (more movement, quicken) thus:

Later, the ominous dark clouds bled into the sky with a fast-moving wind. Piú Mosso is an inky, blue-black that shoots through a flash of orange, the last glow of sunlight.

The orange shimmer smolders quietly within the depths of dark navy blue, like the embers of a dying fire in a dark night.

Fluorescent light brings out a gorgeous shade of peacock and makes the orange shimmer dance across the nail.

Indoors, Piú Mosso turns a dark, rich blue-black, but never completely black. I took this picture by the window and love how the early morning sun brings out the fire within the bottle.

Piú Moso is glorious under sunlight.

The blue is as dark and luscious as ever, and the orange fire comes to life. I can see flashes of gold, green and red here.

Piú Mosso’s formula is similar to Iconoclast — incredibly smooth, buttery and easy to control. Almost no spills and no pooling around the cuticles.

It is so richly pigmented that you can do with only one coat. I used two only because I don’t do one-coaters. My manicure lasted on my for all of six days with only minor tip wear, which is pretty awesome. I wash my hands a lot and type on a computer keyboard all day, and my manicures seldom last longer than three days without chipping and wearing.

So do I have a new favorite nail polish? Oh, I think I do.

Update, 10 December 2011: Piú Mosso is now sold out. Check out the other Firebirds at Rescue Beauty Lounge. Each bottle of polish is USD18.

Teal phase

This blog has been due for a new post for about two weeks now. But real life got in the way, and it was shitty and uninspiring. I’m in a better mood now, so here we are.

Lately, I’ve been wearing nothing but blue and blue-based nail polish — greens, purples, teals. I love blue polish, but many blues I own stain my nails so I have to alternate them with other hues. I’ve been on a teal phase for months, wearing it at least every other week.

When Dior’s Rock Your Nails collection was released earlier this year, I knew I had to have this:

Dior Nirvana is a medium teal creme with a strong green base. It’s a very classy shade. We do business casual in the office, but even if our dress code were a bit more uptight, I can probably still wear Nirvana.

White light brings out the green in Nirvana. This is the shade I would wear with a power suit and killer Louboutin heels.

But it wouldn’t look out of place with a pair of jeans and my favorite elephant-print T-shirt.

Mumu bought Nirvana and Rock Coat for me. It’s by far the most expensive nail polish I have. It’s also one of the more difficult to apply. Dior nail polish comes with a wide, flat, paddle-shaped brush with a curved tip that’s supposed to follow the curve of your cuticle. I find it a bit unwieldy because my nail beds are narrow. I like smaller, thinner brushes because they give me better control.

It’s just such a pretty shade. And it does look even sexier with Rock Coat. It turns into a dark, edgy, smoky green.

As pretty as Nirvana is, though, and as expensive as it is, it doesn’t have a lot of staying power. I think I managed to chip it after two days. I wore it during a week of cleaning out my desk, sorting through piles of papers and packing things in boxes, and the side of my left index nail chipped and left what appeared to be half a Christmas tree, or the profile of an extremely emo cartoon person staring up at the stars.

Two days after that, I got a huge chip on my thumbnail. I had no time to repair or give myself a new manicure so I just took everything off. My Halloween look this year consisted of bare, discolored nails. It went well with the office theme, Plants versus Zombies.

Dior Vernis is available at Rustan’s The Beauty Source for PHP1,200.