Nail Varnish Competition: Runners Up Part II

Every week up until the Great Launch I am highlighting a colour that was considered for the winner, but just missed out, and the reasons why.

This week's runner up was ID; dreamt up by Freja.

Her blog post [unfortunately posted as private, so I can't link to it] told us about her ideas in more depth...

"White is not a colour I have ever considered really putting on my nails. It has always been reserved for tipping a french manicure and to be honest, has always ended up looking like Tippex whenever I have experimented with it anyway.

But, for some reason lately, I have been envisaging it as the next big colour for nails and definitely for me. To me it is a natural and obvious progression from the muted mushroomy Chanel Particulière and from the pale pastels of Chanel Jade and Illamasqua's own Pastel Nails collection. White with a hint of black."

"I chose to call my colour ID and it is a colour I would describe as "dead white". Not bright, stark, true white, but white if it had gone stale and with a very slight touch of grey when compared to full white. It is thick and creamy in texture and would have a satin finish rather than plainly matte or glossy. It is essentially a white nail varnish containing a hint or black. However, the colour is not a "grey" and could never be described so. It would be white that only became apparenthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifly dirty when compared to a true white. A contradictory (but equally as grungy and gothic) alternative to black nail colour."

Although pale, ID is inspired by a dark side of being human; a side of secrets, deepest thoughts, fantasies and a need to conceal them. An absence of colour, ID is subconsciously contradictory; an attempt to avoid exposure whilst our inner narcissist invites the onlooker to wonder "who are you?"

I loved this; I loved the thought behind it and the dirty white idea and the satin finish as opposed to matte or glossy that would give it a real edge. We briefed it into our development team who sent us this sample to review...

So what were our thoughts? Well, it just looked too white. And that's such a difficult colour to pin down! It was a dirty white, yes, but the other colours they sent us looked too grey and that was specifically what Freja didn't want. We already retail a white Nail Varnish and in all honesty, it's not a top seller. So to run this alongside it just didn't make much commercial sense. When you stand the bottles up next to each other on a counter, it would be difficult to tell the difference.

Click here to see the Runner Up Part I