It's the Soft Shades time of year again! This year,
OPI gives us a truly mixed collection, called
Oz - the Great and Powerful, after the movie that goes by the same name and will premiere on the International Women's Day on March 8th.
Clockwise from top right:
I Theodora You,
Don't Burst My Bubble, and
Glints of Glinda.
Clockwise from bottom left: When Monkeys Fly!, Lights of Emerald City, and Which is Witch?.
Don't Burst My Bubble, three coats. Very pale, slightly warm toned pastel pink crelly.
Glints of Glinda, three coats. Peach leaning beige pastel jelly.
I Theodora You, three coats. Slightly translucent light bubblegum pink creme.
Lights of Emerald City, one coat over Don't Burst My Bubble. Larger white square glitter mixed with smaller iridescent squares in the red to gold to green spectrum, in transparent base.
When Monkeys Fly!, one coat over Glints of Glinda. Small and medium hexagonal, holographic silver glitters, and large gold hexes in transparent base.
Which is Witch?, one coat over I Theodora You. Micro and medium sized holographic silver hex glitter along with smaller holographic silver strings in transparent base.
In this collection you will also find a Liquid Sand polish in an antique golden bronzy shade, called
What Wizardry is This?.
Topping last year's fantastic Soft Shades collection
New York City Ballet of course wasn't an easy task for the OPI peeps, but to at least attempt it, they gathered a diverse bunch of lacquers in all sorts of finishes, where the three mandatory Soft Shades pastels have been accompanied by equally many glitters. The latter seem to have been made after glancing at what the independent brands have done lately. That means that these glitters are more brave than OPI ever dared to be before, and that the concept for the Soft Shades collection of the last couple of years, with one topper polish to accompany the pastels have already been overthrown. If you take the Liquid Sand polish into account, a supposedly new and daring finish of a color which isn't a classic Soft Shade in itself, the typical pastels are in minority. I applaud OPI for going outside their ladylike comfort zone, but was it really all that successful..?
Let's skip discussion of the pastel shades - they're pastels, nothing spectacular either in color or finish - and move straight to the glitter portion of the collection. I'm just going to get this overwith: When Monkeys Fly! is a disaster. While OPI really tried with the large hexes and all, they failed. The gold hexagons are a curly mess, which is very obvious in the photos above. Let's hope for a correction of this in future batches, but the batch my bottle is from had to endure being mixed with a glitter that obviously hasn't been tested for use in solvents over time. Try again, and try harder, OPI! And after this massive failure, I am happy to say I was happy to see OPI had made a glitter with iridescent particles. And squares! I love that. One may argue that most iridescent glitters look weird over lighter shades, and that perhaps the particle distribution is a little uneven and sometimes too abundant, but here OPI gets an A+ for effort. Which is Witch? is the one that will probably sell insanely well, especially in these times of string glitter deification - and come on, all the glitters in this baby are holographic! No tween can resist that. Perhaps their mothers can't either.
Worth mentioning à propos the pastels, is that the reason why we loved last year's New York City Ballet so much, which was the fantastic jelly finishes, is mostly gone this year. Don't Burst My Bubble has the classic annoying pastel formula with streakiness and patchiness and overall application hell, Glints of Glinda is the one that is the most jelly like, but it doesn't quite reach to the same translucency standards as the Ballets, and surprisingly, due to a breezy (for a pastel, that is...) application and not too shabby pink color, I Theodora You brings home the winner trophy in this round.
Oh, and I didn't hate the names! No, until I have seen the movie, I will stay indifferent towards them. Except when it comes to I Theodora You, because despite not having a clue who Theodora is, that is the cutest name Suzi has come up with in a long, long time. I Theodora it.
These products were sent for review.
Swedish word of the day:
mäktig -adjective powerful
A pastel seldom is.
