Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Maximillian Strasse-Her was released by Essie as part of the Madison Ave-Hue collection for spring 2013. Essie describes it as a cool grey green and I agree. This is a pale smooth mortar grey with a sage green tone to it and possibly a few drops of blue in there too, as this polish can take on a blue hue in certain situations, like under incandescent lighting.

Application was ok. The consistency of Maximillian Strasse-Her is fluid, creamy and dense, easy to manipulate and with good flow over the nail. This polish separates with time sooner than any other polish I've seen, so be sure to give it a good shake before using and let it stand for five or ten minutes before beginning to polish to give any bubbles time to dissipate. Pigmentation is very good with completely opaque coverage in two coats. I thought it could have been a bit more self-leveling as my ridges were still quite apparent after two coats. I went on to apply a third, which provided a bit more ridge camo but there are definitely better self-levelers out there. Like many other whitened polishes, this one will ghost around the edges if you don't align your coats exactly. Maximillian Strasse-Her dries naturally in good time to a smooth glossy finish.

Photos show three coats of Maximillian Strasse-Her over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

Essie Maximillian Strasse-Her

I love this sleek, demure color and wish it provided a bit more ridge camo, but I could probably remedy that and the third coat of polish by using two layers of my favorite basecoat, Butter London Nail Foundation, underneath. 

By the way, I hate that they felt the need to fluff up some of the names of the polishes in this collection with such weirdly hyphenated double entendre gimmicks. Ave-Hue, Hip-Anema, (and silliest of all) Strasse-Her. Why not just call it Maximillian Strasse and be done with it? It would have been much classier. Sigh.  

After snapping off the corner of two different nails recently I decided to try a more rounded, squoval shape. It's not as tidy to me as a squared nail, but I think perhaps it suits my fingers better and hopefully I won't be snapping off chunks of my nails when I go to open the car door, pull out a drawer from a filing cabinet or remove a sliding top from a container. I have several nails that torque and some with tighter c-curves than others that give the illusion of being more curved at the free edge than they actually are, so I had to make some judgment calls to get them all looking similar enough to each other. It was kind of nerve-wracking, actually, and I kinda feel like I want to file them all off straight across again just because of how easy the square shape has been to maintain. 

We'll just see how it goes.

love,
Liz