NARS Night Series Nail Polish Collection Fall 2011 Swatches and Review

NARS Night Series nail polishes. They finally exist. I'd been wishing they'd do polishes based on the Night series shadows so I was really excited when I saw the announcement for these. I had hoped they'd translate Night Fever shadow into a polish, alas, the four Night shades they chose were Night Breed, Night Flight, Night Porter and Night Rider.


Night Breed. Night Breed is a black base with irregular silver glitter. There's some round traditional glitter but the majority of it is odd flakes and shapes in different sizes. I didn't expect to like this because it's a very common and overdone theme (black with silver glitter) but once I had it on my nails I fell in love. It's gorgeous, but it's extremely similar to Orly Goth (another favorite of mine). If you have Orly Goth and aren't a NARS collector, you probably won't need this one. Unless, of course, you're a fan of this film:

Nightbreed (1990).

Night Flight. Night Flight is a black base with iridescent blue shimmer. The blue is the dominant color and the black base only deepens the shade and enhances the shimmer. There are hints of pink and green shimmer in here as well, very subtle but quite pretty. Totally makes me think of this:





Night Porter. Night Porter is the one I was originally most interested in but I'm slightly disappointed by it. It's a dirty green with green and gold iridescent shimmer. It has a really dull look to it indoors, which is what disappoints me. Outside in full sunlight it looks amazing. All the different colors of shimmer come out and it loses most of the dullness.


Night Rider. Very unusual color. Fairly true to the shadow color, but better in nail polish form. It's a jelly-like murky grey-purple base completely packed with iridescent shimmer flakes. Some look silver and white, others are borderline holographic because they shift colors so much. The duochromey/iridescent flakes are the most subtle and the silvery-white ones stand out the most. I'm not sure the name works for me because all I see in my head is this:


The formula on these was decent. Night Porter was a little too thick and gave me trouble and Night Rider was oddly fluffy feeling. Night Breed and Night Flight were perfect. I did three coats of all, only Night Rider needed a third coat. These are pretty pigment heavy and could be one-coaters if you do thick coats. I like thinner coats so I did two really thin ones when I wore them. They all dry to a very dull finish so topcoat is a must. Though, topcoat is always a must so that's sort of irrelevant, isn't it?

Overall, I'm not super thrilled with them but I do like them. Night Breed is really close to Orly Goth. None of them are as sparkly or filled with pearl shimmer (I read that as 'glass fleck') as I thought they would be. They're all pretty close to their namesake shadows, so that's cool- matching shadow and nail polish.

I don't think these are limited edition but I'll have to double check. The NARS website doesn't state that they are. These are limited edition (confirmed by NARS). They're $17 each, available from NARS and Nordstrom only at the moment. I got mine from Nordstrom because I hate the FedEx Smart Post shipping that NARS uses.