Zoya True Collection and Fleck Effect Mylar Fleck Topcoats for Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

Happy new year! What better way to start the year than with a blog post about some brand new flaky topcoats and some pretty spring purples?

Zoya's Spring 2011 collection is a two-parter this year. One part is the usual spring set of three cremes and three shimmers, and to go along with it is a mini set of three "Fleck Effect" flaky topcoats. Take a look!

Zoya True Collection Spring 2012

Zoya Bevin. Bevin is this soft, dirty, dreamy-looking type of green turquoise color. It looks antique to me. I really love this color, so it's a shame that it looks so terrible on me. Lobster hands to the extreme. Probably best for people who don't have a lot of red or pink in their skin like I do.


Zoya Cho. Usually it seems like these things are named after reality TV people or models and actresses, but maybe... just maybe... this one might be named after something I know? Probably not, but still technically yes, right? Anyway... This is a warm, yellow toned creamy shade. Little hidden silver shimmer in it. Not right for my skin tone, but I can see this looking better on someone warmer than me. I think it accentuates how dry and sore my cuticles look. Winter is killing my hands. Bleh.


Zoya Farah. Now this one I like. It's another 'dirty' shade, this time it's sort of fleshy and beigey with a distinctive green tint to it. At least on my skin it looks like it has a greenish cast. Could just be the red in my skin bringing it out. Makes me think of a safari pith helmet:



Zoya Lotus. This one is more my style. It's a smoky cool purple with glowy pink shimmer. I had to take a picture with flash to get the shimmer to come out, but see how it looks like burning embers? Love that. Little warning about this one: it dries a lot darker than it looks in the bottle.


Zoya Skylar. Neat looking slate blue with both gold and silver shimmer. The shimmer is the chunky, flaky kind so it really stands out. Not quite glittery, but definitely distinct pieces. Dries completely smooth. This is not really a common shade of blue, either. It looks calm and kinda faded/antiqued looking.



Zoya Tru. This is a little bit like Lotus, but a warm version. It's red toned and Lotus is blue toned. Like Lotus, it dries at least a full shade darker than it appears in the bottle. You can watch it happening right on your nails- it's very strange! Anyway, this is super purple looking, not quite as dusty/smoky as Lotus, but not a clean purple either. Just a little muted. The shimmer in this is warm red and gold while Lotus has cooler pink shimmer. Both are super pretty.

And remember when I mentioned another collection of 'flakies' coming out in Spring 2012? Here it is:

Zoya Fleck Effect Collection Spring 2012

Zoya Chloe Fleck Effect Topcoat. This is a clear but tinted base with medium and small sized flakes. It's a combination of the red/orange/gold/yellow multichrome flake style and a little bit of some small-sized green/blue duochrome flakes. This is definitely my favorite of the three. It has the most colors and the most depth. And it's not a Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure/Nubar 2010/Essie Shine of the Times/GOSH Rainbow (et cetera, ad nauseum) dupe, which I appreciate.



Zoya Maisie Fleck Effect Topcoat. This is a clear but blue-tinted base with medium and small blue-green flakes. It's a lot like Nfu Oh 54. You can get it to shift to yellow at some angles, but it's mostly just that bright green-bright blue-bright turquoise color all the time.



Zoya Opal Fleck Effect Topcoat. This is a clear but slightly green tinted base with bright green/blue flakes. It looks nearly the same as Maisie, but it seems more green. It stays green at angles where the flakes in Maisie would shift to another color.

Here's the Fleck Effect topcoat shades layered over the shades in the True collection. Each combination is one coat of Fleck Effect topcoat over three coats of polish.

Chloe over Cho.

Chloe over Tru.

Maisie over Lotus.

Maisie over Skylar.

Opal over Bevin.

Opal over Farah.

And some closeups. Each picture is one coat of Fleck Effect topcoat over a black creme polish. These are pretty big pictures, you may like to enlarge them to see more detail.

Zoya Opal - Zoya Maisie - Zoya Chloe

Zoya Opal - Zoya Maisie - Zoya Chloe


Opal over black.


Maisie over black.

Chloe over black.

The formula on these was good. All of the True collection shades were smooth and opaque. The Fleck Effect shades are meant to be topcoats which means that they're all sheer. The True shades applied easily, maybe a little more runny than the usual Zoya creme formula, but didn't give me any major trouble. The Fleck Effects were a little gooey feeling and a little globby, but again, not troublesome. I did three coats of each in the pictures above. Dry time on the True shades was nice and quick but the Fleck Effects took a bit longer.

My thoughts? The neutrals (Cho, Farah) seem out of place in this collection, especially right on the heels of the new Feel collection of neutrals. The rest of the shades are colorful but soft and I would have liked to see two more colors instead of two more beiges.

The addition of the three flake glitter topcoats really spices up the neutrals and dusty colors and they all layer well together. My only criticism for the Fleck Effect portion is that Maisie and Opal look too much alike, especially when layered; adding a blue-purple style duochrome flake would have given us three distinctly different looking flake topcoats. Otherwise, they apply well, layer well with any color, and dry a little more quickly than a lot of the other flaky polishes I've bought in the past (like Nfu Oh, which takes forever).

These will be available starting January 13th on Zoya.com.

(This was sent for review.)