Fall trend watch: Matte nail polish

A few months ago I started looking for a particular shade of gray nail polish. While I surfed and searched and asked around a couple people pointed me in the direction of ManGlaze. I checked it out and found dark gray and black matte polishes. Nifty, but not what I was looking for. So I filed the info about matte polish away in my brain and promptly forgot about it. Isn’t that always what happens right before something shows up everywhere and you think “Huh, didn’t I just hear something about this a few months ago”?

Suddenly it seems matte is all over the place. I saw on twitter that Zoya had a BOGO deal on their polishes and since I was dying to try them out anyway I hopped over there and made sure to add Loredana($7) to my basket o’ goodies. Loredana is from the Fall 2009 Matte Velvet collection. There’s also a Winter 2009 Matte Velvet collection, which makes 6 matte colors from Zoya. Loredana is described as a gunmetal gray with shimmer and I’d have to say that’s a pretty dead on description. How you can get such great shimmer and still have a matte polish I don’t know, but Zoya nailed it(little pun there, pardon me).

I’ve been hearing good things about Zoya lately and so far they don’t disappoint. Zoya is free of toluene, formaldehyde, DBP and camphor, making it a safer polish. Plus it’s been formulated for long lasting wear on natural nails, no easy feat. It only took two fast drying coats for perfect coverage and I honestly could’ve done passably with only one coat had I felt lazier. I have artificial nails on right now which really helps color to stay unusually long, but matte polishes are billed as being less long wearing than typical polishes. It’s recommended you not use matte polish with a base coat, but I’m gonna say you should try it anyway, if only to avoid staining from the very rich colors. Of course you want to skip a top coat, shiny top coats pretty much defeat the point of a matte, yeah? The color takes some getting used to, everytime I caught a glimpse my brain told me something was wrong with that picture, but it started to really grow on me after a few days and I got compliments left and right over the color.

(I have pictures, honest, but I seem to have misfiled them somewhere, so stay tuned for an update with them in this spot. Sorry)

Ultimately I’m really diggin these new polishes and I would definitely recommend you give them a shot. If you aren’t totally sold on the matte polish you can pick up a matte top coat and get a more flat look that still has little bit of a shine. Have you tried a matte polish yet? What are your thoughts?