Three amazing a-England The Mythicals nail polishes

A England (aka a-england, I'm not sure which is the official format) is a brand-new London nail polish brand. Normally I'm extremely wary of reviewing brand new indie brands because of my experience with the world of indie mineral makeup, but a-england has been around for a while now and seems to be a pretty stand-up company with a really gorgeous, high-quality product. I'm very excited to be reviewing these three shades from The Mythicals line. I'm sure most of you hardcore polish junkies have seen these already, so allow my photos to add to the stack of evidence confirming how gorgeous these are. Seriously, they are so cool

Oh, and also cool? The entire line is themed on Arthurian legend.

These are the shades I tried:

Avalon. This is a very deep (but not blackened) blue-toned purple with iridescent shimmer. It's not just a plain shimmer, though, it has a two-toned blue purple/red purple thing going on. I suppose I could call this a duochrome, but instead of shifting, both colors are visible all the time. It's really neat, it's almost layered looking.



Lady of the Lake. Can you believe your eyes? A PURPLE HOLO. I know it looks very blue in my photos, and it is a blue sort of purple, but it is less blue and more purple in real life. The angle where it looks most purple is in brighter light which makes it look a little washed out. This is a very rich, regal, gorgeous starry type of purple. I am seriously impressed with this polish. It has smooth holo particles, not a chunky glitter, but not a true linear holo. Really, really fantastic, I can't even tell you how great this polish is. It's dark and vampy but still obviously purple and that sprinkle of rainbow sparkle is totally mesmerizing.


Tristam. This one is similar to Lady Of The Lake except it's all blue. A very rich deep blue (also obviously blue, not blackened) with a nice amount of hologram shimmer. The particles are fine and smooth, not chunky or rough or glitter-like. So beautiful. This is not a dupe for OPI Designer Series Glamour, but it is somewhat similar, so if you missed out on that one, you may want to pick this one up to satisfy your dark blue holo craving.

The formula on these was great. The holo polishes were very thick, but that also means that they were very opaque. If I did a really thick coat, I could get one coat coverage. I did two thinner coats and that was perfect. Avalon was a little thinner than the holos, but it still had a little of that three-free thick feeling to it. All applied well, the brushes and bottles were not flawed in any way and I didn't get stained from the blue (shockingly). The only complaint I can think of on the formula is that they seem to have a pretty long dry time. I always use quick dry topcoat, and I used Seche Vite when I wore each of these, but they still stayed dentable for quite a long time.

Overall, this looks like a really strong and creative line. It's small- there are only around a dozen shades- but it's good. Not all of the colors seem completely unique, they have your standard silver foil, black creme and pale pink type shades, but they all look fantastic. The holo polishes and the purples were the stand-outs to me, but I'd love to see the metallic gold, the vampy black-red and the other blues and purples in person.

The polishes aren't cheap, though- they're £9.00, which is about $14 US dollars. Not outrageous or overpriced, but more expensive than your average salon brand. I'd say those holos are totally worth it, but I might hesitate to pay that much for a plain black or white unless the formula and coverage was really amazing.

They are running a special, though:



(These were sent to me for review.)