Zoya NYFW Gloss Collection Fall 2012 Swatches and Review

Finally, to finish out Zoya's fall 2012 releases, the Gloss collection. The Gloss collection is a trio of three buildable jelly gloss shades. Each polish starts off very sheer, but builds opacity and intensity with each additional coat, allowing you to customize your color, create layered nail art effects (like syrup or gradient manicures), or they can be layered over other colors to add a sheer tint. The colors are:


Zoya Frida (four coats). Frida is a sheer blue-green jelly. It reminds me of the rare, old discontinued Essie polish Night Cap, which I always thought looked like NyQuil.


Zoya Katherine (four coats). Originally a custom color designed for a Peter Som runway show. Katherine is dark sheer eggplant jelly. Out of the three, this is the least even-looking. In my opinion, it's not wearable at one or two coats and doesn't look its best until four coats, which is what I'm wearing here.


Zoya Paloma (four coats). Paloma is sheer berry purple jelly. A little less red than it looks here, but still more berry/fuchsia than full-on purple. It's the brightest of the three and also the most even-looking. It's smooth and even enough to wear at one coat and still look good.

The formula on these was great. Thin but not runny. Very smooth and easy to apply. The only thing to watch out for with these is applying coats that are a consistent thickness. If you apply it thin in some areas and thicker in others, the end result may look a little patchy unless you go for the full four coats. I didn't find them to be streaky at all, just patchy unless the coats were an even thickness. Dry time was quick and every shade dries to a glossy finish even without topcoat.

Just to demonstrate how buildable these are, I've taken a photo of them after each coat. You can really see how the color intensifies and the jelly look starts to develop from the sheer/clear formula:

Zoya Frida, one coat.

Zoya Frida, two coats.


Zoya Frida, three coats.


Zoya Frida, four coats.

Zoya Paloma, one coat.

Zoya Paloma, two coats.

Zoya Paloma, three coats.

Zoya Paloma, four coats.

Zoya Katherine, three coats.

These are fun. There's so many possibilities for layering with them. One thing I like to do with sheer polishes like these (like the old Maybelline waters, or that set of clear tinted Essie polishes that included Night Cap, or even the CND Plexi Pop colors) is to layer them over foils. Silver foil is best, but gold foil looks cool too. Equally cool over glitters, especially if you like the look of 'jelly sandwich' manicures. Ooh, that gives me an idea. Frida jelly sandwich with black glitter. Need to try that.

Overall, really cool set. Versatile colors. Paloma has the best, most even coverage of all three shades, but Frida is the most interesting color. Katherine is nice at four coats but it's a little bit patchy unless you're really, really careful.

The Zoya Gloss Collection will be available on zoya.com starting July 15th.

(This was sent for review.)