Zoya Suvi

Suvi was originally released by Zoya as part of its Downtown collection for fall 2007. It's a gorgeous deep bottle green shimmer polish. It has finely milled dark emerald green shimmers in a smoky charcoal base, which has a darkening effect around the edges of the nail giving Suvi a little of that "lit from within" look. Although it's a very dark color, Suvi does not look blackened.

Application was dreamy. I've had this polish for a while and it had thickened in the bottle, which in this case is a good thing. From what I understand, the major complaint about Suvi is that it is thin and sheer. Well, let that bottle hang out for half a year or so and it ages right into prime Zoya formulaic splendor: liquid but dense and creamy with plenty of pigmentation. Coverage showed a bit of sheerness at one coat, but with two I achieved bottle color and complete opacity. I was expecting the shimmery formula to show brush strokes, but this polish self-levels beautifully and as it does the brush strokes just melt away along with all but the faintest hint of my nail ridges. Happy camper, happy!

This is an incredibly forgiving polish for a shimmer. The brush in my bottle had one bristle longer than the rest and somehow during the process of trimming that bristle I unknowingly garnered a bit of dust bunny (or some such random fluff) on the brush, which plopped right onto the next nail as I was painting. I overworked the polish trying to move the offender closer to the free edge for plucking but that wasn't happening. So I nabbed it with the tip of my cleanup brush and added a dab of Suvi to cover the patch. It worked, the patch didn't show (miraculous) and the polish didn't bubble in spite of how roughly I'd treated it.

Suvi dries naturally to such a beautiful smooth glossy finish that I almost didn't want to add topcoat. I thought it looked absolutely perfect as it was and didn't even want to chance the opportunity for topcoat bubbles or that Seche Vite corona down at the cuticles that sometimes appears when I short the topcoat coverage at that edge and the tiny strip of untopcoated Zoya polish freaks out from contact with the Seche (these two formulas aren't the bosomest of buddies). In the end, though, my fear of smudges won out and I did add topcoat, sans bubbles or corona.

Photos show two coats of Suvi over Seche Rebuild treatment and Butter London Nail Foundation basecoat, finished with said trouble free topcoat of Seche Vite.

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi, with bonus green glitter on middle finger

ditto... I have no idea where that glitter came from either. It's not like I'd just removed a green glitter polish before applying Suvi....

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Zoya Suvi

Wow, I am really impressed by this polish. I've tended to shy away from darker blue based greens in the past because, well, it sounds silly now looking at these photos but darker greens always seemed a little flat and dingy to me. Suvi is neither of those things. This is a rich shimmery metallic British racing green dream of a polish. 

It reminds me of my father's old '63 MG roadster, which was about the same color but not metallic of course. When the three of us were little he'd take us driving in it with the top down and since there was no back seat he'd let us sit on the edge of the rear with our feet dangling down into the well behind the front seats. Can you say dangerous? But it sure was fun. I can still remember the old leather and canvas smell of that little car with it's black snap down top, beautiful wire spoke wheels and plucky growly engine sound, and how it felt soooo fast riding in it with top down and the trees streaming by in a blur. 

Eleanor, have you ever ridden in a convertible with the top down? Because if you haven't, we need to rectify that ASAP!

love,
Aunt Liz