I shall focus on what a gorgeous red this is, even though it was a little hard to handle. It didn’t bubble like Violette (thank the heavens!) and it definitely dried faster as well. Unfortunately the color of the nail swatch you will see below has FOUR, yep 4, coats to achieve the color that matched the bottle. They were thin coats albeit because I was worried it was like Violette. No bubbles. Well, there were marginal bubbles, but not as bad as it could’ve been.
This is a gorgeous color, but I am sure there are dupes out there. It’s in my top 10 for favorite reds.
Whilst going through a moving box that was innocuously labeled “Bathroom Junk” from three years ago (shhh….), I discovered this little gem – Chanel’s Violette. Released in early 2000, I’d actually venture to say about 2003 since that was when we were living in Scotland and I know that this is where I purchased this color, I had high hopes for this to be a dupe of my infamous lemming/lust/must have/WILL KUT YOU FOR of Chanel’s Brown Sugar nail polish. Released about six months after Rouge Noir – the original – in 1994, I went nuts for it. Loved it so much I scrimped my pennies to share it with friends because I’d buy them a bottle for their birthday.
Brown Sugar is a polish I can definitely wax lyrical on for…well, ever. Four years ago I saw a bottle of Brown Sugar on eBay. I stopped bidding at $40. It ended up selling for $60. To this day, that is one of my true nail polish regrets. I would, in all honesty, trade in all my bottles of nail polish just so I can have a good bottle of Brown Sugar. That is how much I loved that color.
While Violette hits the spot, it’s like eating a banana when you really want chocolate – you get the potassium you wanted, but it’s not the flavor or texture that would send you into your own happy place. There are also some very subtle differences – Brown Sugar was bit more beige-y, slightly mushroom-y and a tinge more purple. Violette is…well, more violet colored and a lot lighter. I felt Brown Sugar was truly the best neutral nail polish out there. It flattered all my friends’ skin tones.
All right, enough. I’ll stop. Here are the pics.
Formula on this was terrible! But I think this was one of the first bottles of 3 Free, but I could be wrong so don’t quote me on it. These were two thin coats with no top coat put on. It bubbled and I was immediately reminded why I had thrown this color into a box and conveniently forgot about it. My Brown Sugar never bubbled, but it took forever and a millennia to dry.