China Glaze New Bohemian Luster Chrome Collection Fall 2012 Swatches and Review

I have been eagerly awaiting this collection ever since I saw that first leaked picture months ago. Duochromes are my true love, and duochromes from China Glaze couldn't be anything other than amazing. Now, here we are in the first week of August and the New Bohemian collection is finally here in all its shiny, reflective, chrome-like, color-changing glory. The colors are:

Deviantly Daring - No Plain Jane - Rare & Radiant - Swanky Silk - Unpredictable -Want My Bawdy

China Glaze Deviantly Daring. Turquoise-teal-blue-green duochrome metallic with gold shimmer accent. This is the brightest and most richly colored polish in the collection. It's also the most opaque. The duochome in it isn't as strong on the nail as it is in the bottle, but there's still a modest amount of color shift. The chrome finish on this is stunning combined with saturated blue-green color.


China Glaze No Plain Jane. Ironically, this one looks like the plain Jane of the collection to me. It's a purple metallic with subtle duochrome, very similar to Deborah Lippmann Private Dancer / Nails Inc Cheyne Walk. However, it seems to lack the same strength of blue-purple and gold duochrome that the others have. I see a little orange shift with some gold at the edges, but it's not strong. It's also a little too sheer (at three coats here) for my taste.


China Glaze Rare and Radiant. Another Péridot dupe. Gorgeous, though. Great formula, bright, shiny, reflective finish, strong duochrome. Definitely worth getting if you don't already have Chanel Péridot.


China Glaze Swanky Silk. Beautiful pink, gold, and green chrome-finish duochrome. Another duplicate color; this one looks like Deborah Lippmann Sugar Daddy / Nails Inc. Stratford. I loved those two colors, I love this one. Nicest formula of the three, though the color is practically the same.


China Glaze Unpredictable. A blue-green-gold-teal chrome-finish duochrome. It's like a mixture of Deviantly Daring and Rare & Radiant. Makes me think of mermaid tails or Emerald Ash Borer beetles. Really strong duochrome on this one and very shiny.


China Glaze Want My Bawdy. Maybe it's just my eyes, but I can't see any duochrome in this one. I don't know if it's supposed to have any, but the rest of the colors in the collection do, so I assumed it would. It's shiny ad colorful at least. It's a little bit like OPI Into The Night from the Spiderman collection, just more sheer and a bit brighter/cleaner. I like the name, it makes me think of Majestic and Jessica.

The formula on these was good, but a bit on the sheer side. None of them were too runny or too thick and they all applied very smoothly, but I needed to do three coats of each for complete opacity. The only exception is Deviantly Daring which was completely opaque in two coats (but I did three anyway). I had the best results waiting for each coat to partially dry before applying the next one. The dry time on these is really fast, even without topcoat. And the brushstrokes do mostly disappear after they're completely dry.

I have slightly conflicted feelings about this collection. Without taking into consideration any of the other similar colors released this year and viewing just this collection by itself, I think it's perfect. But, having already seen several duplicate colors released recently (and with a few more potential dupes on the way), I wish there were more colors in here to make up for the clones. I suppose this is both good and bad- good if you didn't want to shell out major cash on the Chanel and Lippmanns (and to a lesser extent, the Nails Inc. ones), bad if you've already purchased those and now a cheaper option with a better formula is available.

Regardless of the dupes, I do still think this is a great collection. I love the colors, I love the shiny chrome finish, I love the formula. I think No Plain Jane should have more duochrome flash to it, but otherwise they're all very good. Fantastic, even. The shiny chrome-like finish on them is very pretty and doesn't have the streaking and chipping problems that older chromes have.

The China Glaze New Bohemian Collection is available now. Word of warning: This collection is limited edition, so you may want to go check it out sooner rather than later.

(This was sent for review.)