essie - Where's My Chauffeur? (swatches and review)

     Hey guys, I have another polish from essie's Leading Lady collection: Where's My Chauffeur? This kind of polish always gets me because I'm a sucker for light blue shades. Unfortunately for me, these types of light blue are either a hit or miss for my skin tone. For some reason, certain light blue colors clash with my skin and make me look orange and/or ashy (sometimes at the same time) while others look fine. Mostly they clash though, which is a shame since all of them are so pretty in the bottle.

     This polish is what appeared to be a China Glaze For Audrey dupe in the press release. Just from the bottle appearance alone, this is not exactly a dupe. They're in the same color shade and seem to have the same undertones but For Audrey is just a smidge lighter. It's not noticeable unless you're really looking. It's also close to China Glaze Aquadelic and essie's Turquoise and Caicos, but with just a hint more green: a subtle difference, but different nonetheless.

This polish. Oh, what to say about it. It's pretty, I'll give you that. But as far as the formula goes? A streaky hot mess. The first layer is patch central. There's balding all around. With the second coat, there is still some areas where the nail bed is visible, which is annoying because i waited for the first layer to fully dry before attempting a second. It took until the third, very thick, very goopy layer for there to be full coverage. And it took some time to dry because of it.

Swatches:

Overall, this is pass for me. I did not like the formula and how hard I had to work for the even coverage even though the final result is pretty good. The color is too similar to For Audrey for it to be a justifiable purchase. And since For Audrey is a permanent color, I'd suggest picking that polish up instead of this one if you want that light Tiffany box blue. If you're dead set on this color, it is available for $8 on essie's website, at ulta and various large chain drugstore retailers like Riteaid, Walgreens and CVS.

If you have any polishes you'd like to see swatched from my stash, let me know and I'll put it in my queue.

Thanks for reading!

-seal