Zoya Harley

Having swatched Marley, of course I had to do Harley. These two sit together in my mind and on my polish rack as well, two pale pearly polishes from spring collections two years apart in release.

Harley was released by Zoya as part of it's Twist collection for spring 2009. That's five years ago, people! Next thing you know someone will be swatching this polish and it'll be ten years!

See there, told you I was a cranky old bat. 

Anyway, Harley. The official description as a "light concrete base with subtle flecks of silver, gold and copper shimmer" is true in person as well. Although it appears to have a flush of lilac in the bottle, Harley is a true neutral gray warmed and given dimensionality by subtle microfine metallic shimmers. The silver shimmer is the most noticeable of these to the eye, and adds a sheen of pearlescence and a gossamer luminosity to the color. As one MUA reviewer said, "it reads silver without hitting you over the head with it." It's true!

Application was great! I know I said I was going to try the ridge defeating layering trick today, but it wasn't needed. The consistency is slightly sheer, fluid, light and smooth with excellent flow and self-leveling properties. This is an easy polish to apply and goes on evenly in thin to medium coats without any streaking or patchiness. Due to the slightly sheer formula, coverage must be built to opacity. Two coats is quite passable, but three is better. Cleanup is quick and easy. Harley dries naturally in average to longer than average time (depending upon thickness and number of coats) to a nice glossy finish.

This is my second manicure of Harley today. The first one turned out better, but I made the mistake of grabbing up the cat's favorite feather fishing rod toy for some rowdy playtime during the period of vulnerability. Never do this! You wouldn't think holding a flexible rod and snapping a feathery lure around the house for ten minutes would result in manicure malignancy, but those dent gremlins are crafty beasts and somehow I managed to divot or dent most of my nails. So I started over, and as it so often goes with do over manicures I rushed a little and overloaded my brush a little and clumsily extracted a few linty fibers. If you detect lumpiness or free edge weirdness in the photos, that's what that is all about. My apologies.

Photos show three coats of Harley over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of HK Girl that I applied a little too generously (see above), resulting in a bit of free edge pooling, so there's that too.

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

Zoya Harley

This is a beautiful sophisticated grey polish with a sleek, gleaming feminine sensibility. It's not stark and flat, it's got subtle depth and a pearly reflective glow. I showed it to Fuzzy, who is definitely an expert on greys having had a custom grey paint mixed for the livingroom because none of the bazillion grey wall paints out there were satisfactory, and she loved the color. "Oooh! Nice grey!" She then somehow drew me into a discussion about whether polished nails were the personal adornment equivalent of men's neckties. It made my brain ache, I had to walk away.

So I guess while this wasn't the most perfect nail polish day, it was a pretty darn good one anyway.

love,
Liz