Pink and Undecided: prestige

Nail Diary 03 : Prestige Wonder Gloss Nail Lacquer Multivitamins (NLW-38 Intuition)

Hi everybody!

Ever heard of the brand Prestige? I'm not very familiar with this brand before i stumbled into their counter somewhere in Italy. Now, why i don't write reviews as much as other beauty bloggers is because i'd always painstakingly try to find as much information as possible for every new brand i am introducing (because i am weird that way), it takes time and also because as you'd know by now-i'm very detailed. I cannot write only a few lines and consider it a review, i would go on and on until i'm sure every base's covered. I'm sure there are people who like this kind of review as well as people who prefer shorter, more direct ones :). After all, there's no right or wrong in reviewing methods, i think!

Having said that, i am having difficulties finding detailed information about this brand. Sure, i found the website pretty quickly (i've linked it up above in case you're interested to have a look), but they didn't even explain where the brand came from, etc. I'm gonna have to guess that this is a US brand? Please enlighten me, if anyone have a better information than me! Oh yeah, apparently they are available in Asia too (i do think i saw their booths in Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan but i didn't pay too much attention to them because in Asia there are a lot of other more interesting brands that caught my fancy hehe).

What's even harder to find is an official picture of this exact nail polish i'm about to review : Prestige Wonder Gloss Nail Lacquer Multivitamins in NLW-38 (Intuition). Even though i stumbled upon a few pictures and reviews of Prestige's nail lacquers, all of them seem to come from a different line because they all had black caps instead of silver like mine! So, i don't have any official picture to show you unfortunately! Have to settle for one i took myself!

Though they only had a tiny little counter in that Italian mini market, they actually carried quite a lot of selection of Prestige's products! From this line alone i saw more than 10 colors available, i actually grabbed like 5 or 6 colors, but then forced myself to returned a few (because i have nearly 50 bottles of brand new nail polish or so that i haven't even touched >.<), but i did grab a few more from their other (mini) line *le sigh*.

I have almost every shade possible in my nail polish collection, but lately i've been concentrating on crazier, unusual colors-i guess i kinda told myself that i needed more "normal colors". I dunno if dark purple's considered normal (more common than gold glittered emerald green that i am rocking as i type this, i reckon), but anyway, i gravitated towards pink and purple (because they always look oh so pretty together!!!) immediately at the counter, that's why i chose them!

Now, the shade Intuition on the bottle looked somewhat of a darker pastel purple (if there's such thing). Upon closer inspections, it has a multicolored, very fine shimmer that i don't think was apparent in any of the pictures. Once applied, the shimmer also wasn't noticeable at all, unless you grab my hands and look at it like, 5 cm from your eyes *LOL* (but in case you're curious, click on the link that would bring you to my Europe trip entry where i bought this because i had a close up pictures of the bottle).

Unlike most of my nail polish collection that comes in a rounded bottles, this nail polish came in a square-shaped bottle

Made in France

It has more of a straight, slimmer brush than most of my other nail polishes

The slim, straight brush helps for a more precise application, i didn't make as much mess around my cuticle as when i use nail polish that comes with a fatter, rounded brush. But as the brush's kinda thin, sometimes one dip wouldn't be enough to cover my whole nail and i had to re-dip it. I don't mind, but some people might find it to be too much work :).

1 Coat of Intuition on top of my usual Revlon Top Speed Top Coat

Consistency of this nail lacquer's quite runny (which is fine because i dislike gloopy polishes, they are much harder to work with), one coat was very thin, runny, streaky and uneven though, so a second coat is a must-and it dries very quickly too (another plus). I dunno what i expected but i was quite disappointed with that first coat because it looked so much like a few other nail polishes that i've had before (especially similar to Sally Hansen's polish my cousin LL gave to me many many years ago that was actually one of the the very rare polishes that i've actually finished-it was really pretty!)-then again one coat was actually the exact same as the bottled color so i was being unreasonable hehe. But i fell in love after the second coat!

2 coats of Intuition on top of Top Speed

The second coat totally transformed the color! It totally became opaque and a lot darker. It was also no longer the usual, boring purple color but became milky greyish-purple. I was so happy because : 1. I am crazy about dark colors (i think in order of favoritism my list would be dark, then glitters, neon and pastel at last. Weird *as i am mostly a pastel lover*, i know...), and 2. I do not have anything close to this kind of color before! The second coat took longer to dry, so... gotta be patient!

As you can see from the pictures, it was glossy already without any top coat-but of course i cannot skip a top coat-plus it was not as glossy as i like my nails to be (because of the milky-ness)-that's actually quite weird, the name suggested otherwise right! Nothing to worry about though since one coat of light top coat would bring the color to life perfectly!

Hmph, pale and blur picture. I could make it better by hitting the auto correct button but then it would be darker and doesn't resemble the actual color, so please bear with it!

This was actually my Birthday Nails

Final result : 1 coat of base coat, 2 coats of Intuition and 1 coat of top coat

Staying power's on the better side, it started chipping only after the fourth day-and that's after going through an absolute abuse (i was busy scrubbing my birthday skirt because i unconsciously spilled some food on it-when i tried rubbing it off with wet wipes, tiny black spots spread out of nowhere! Then i stupidly followed hunny's instruction to use Go Gone, i think *much belatedly* it's a bad bad idea to use oil based stain remover on a pastel colored fabric! It became blotchy and fugly, thankfully my maid managed to save it by using some lime or something! I was so stressed because it was, of course brand new, that was the first time i wore it and only for a few hours!). Totally gone awry on the fifth day (probably would stay even longer if i didn't abuse it as badly hahaha).

As for the Multivitamins part, i don't really know how to respond to that. It feels just like any other mid-branded nail polishes, but it was sure nice to see that word splayed on the bottle, makes me feel less guilty of abusing my nails with nail polishes all the time hahaha.

All and all, i was pretty happy and satisfied with this nail lacquer, even though it cannot be categorized as dirt cheap (it's around IDR 65.000 if converted, when i bought it), it's also not very expensive-somewhere in the middle (between Revlon or Korean brands and O.P.I/China Glaze/Orly). I'd definitely recommend this for someone who's looking for a nail polish with a unique color, good staying power and not very steady hands.

Not recommended for people who.... errr... prefer cheaper nail polish (you can get 2 Etude House's nail polish with this price) and who wants their polishes to dry off as fast as possible (it takes time for the second coat to dry!), also not for people who wants a more noticeable shimmer and exactly like the bottled color (you can get the bottled color with two coats but it'd be streaky and uneven!).

Would i re-purchase this? Yeah, in other colors if there are any that i fancy next time i stumble into their counter overseas-coz sadly Prestige's not available in Indonesia just yet. But i think you can order it online, i just realized that there's not much brands out there that cannot be purchased online, FML (deep dark obsession : wanting to try out every brand out there at the face of this earth. ACCCCKKKK!!!)

That's all for now, leaving you with a picture of me cam-whoring with my nails (which coincidentally matched my t-shirt!) :p.