Cult Nails Wack Slacks

I took advantage of a recent sale to grab myself some polishes from indie polish maker Cult Nails, and this is one of them. Wack Slacks was released as part of the All Access collection for fall 2013. It's a deep incredibly well-pigmented sapphire blue with a tiny nudge of purple to it that gives the polish a violet look that you catch out of the corner of your eye in certain lights. Mostly though it is a deep sapphire with the gentle, slightly muted quality that sapphire blues almost always seem to carry with them and the ability to pass for anything from royal to navy depending upon lighting and what it's next to.

Application was great. The consistency of Wack Slacks is fluid, creamy and ultra smooth with a fantastic balance between fluidity and viscosity. Profoundly paintable! Pigmentation is superb. Even a thin coat results in completely opaque coverage, with no bubbling or patching or any other kind of folderol to botch it up for you. I used two coats for this manicure to even out some of my shapes on the nail. This polish is also quite amenable to repairing dents or divots with a dot of polish that will self-level into the background before your eyes. It self-levels so well that my ridges were camouflaged after one coat. I have some very nice dark blues, but this one tops them all in terms of application. 

There is a but, however. You knew there had to be a but. It's a bitch to cleanup. Kind of to be expected with a polish that is so intensely pigmented. It applies so well that hopefully there wouldn't be that much cleanup to be done, but if there is, a light touch with the acetone and some extra care is the way to go about it. Any flooding with acetone immediately carries pigment across the skin, around the edges or along the cuticle, especially if your skin is dry as mine unfortunately was when I did this manicure. I had to spend extra time cleaning up my cleanup! Wack Slacks dries in good time to a shade slightly bolder than bottle colors and a beautiful glossy finish.

Photos show two coats of Wack Slacks over treatment and basecoat with a bubbly topcoat of Seche Vite. 

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

Cult Nails Wack Slacks

As you can see, Wack Slacks is not without a certain softness that makes it perfect pairable with just about any kind of outfit, from casual to dressy. This understated quality is one of my favorite of its many virtues, along with the superb formula. I'll be interested to see how it compares to my much loved Deborah Lippmann My Prerogative, which I suspect is a little darker and lacks the fleeting purple overtones of Wack Slacks. 

love,
Liz