YSL La Laque Couture Les Sequins Manicure for Spring 2015
YSL really surprised me this Spring with a very bold pair of nail polishes, completely caught unaware, I was NOT expecting a black and white pairing for a season that is typically marked by pastels and sweet girly hues. As if the bold color choice is insufficient on its own, YSL has chosen to make them textured and blinged!!
YSL La Laque Couture Les Sequins Manicure for Spring 2015 features 2 brand new, limited edition nail polishes – #58 Nuit Blanche and #59 Nuit Noire.
YSL La Laque Couture N° 59 Nuit Noire is a black polish with silver glitter that are quite rounded despite being fairly small. This causes the surface of the nail to be textured, and gives the effect of sequins over a black velvet dress.
YSL La Laque Couture N° 59 Nuit Noire nail swatch – shown here 3 coats without any top coat
“I like the idea of a woman being prim and proper, but having full on black nails. This contrast between the feminine charm and a rebel spirit describes perfectly the universe of a ‘belle de jour’ to me. It’s all about attitude. Black gives a seductive edge.”
— Lloyd Simmons
Nuit Noire is semi-sheer when first applied, and requires 3 coats to be completely opaque. As the silver glitters are rather “thick”, the 3 coats do cause quite an accumulation of the glitter, which whilst do not look too jarring, does eventually cause the overall look to be rather textured. The finish is also non-shiny, and a glossy top coat is needed to smoothen the look and to make the glitter pop.
YSL La Laque Couture N° 58 Nuit Blanche is a pearly white polish with a semi-translucent jelly base. It is filled with iridescent glitter of irregular sizes, some as fine as diamond dust.
I had initially thought it would make a cool white polish, but it is quite impossible to build up any form of opacity due to the semi-translucent base. Also, there is a sort of gel-like consistency to Nuit Blanche, and it sometimes comes off the brush as a glob that resists being spread evenly. The eventual effect is one of a mother-of-pearl “patchy” overlay rather than an uniform shimmery white.
YSL La Laque Couture N° 58 Nuit Blanche swatched on all nails except the middle which is showing a swatch of YSL La Laque Couture N° 59 Nuit Noire – shown here is 3 coats without an additional top coat.
Nuit Blanche was designed to be a sort of top coat, and it looks best worn on top of a dark base. However, due to its semi-translucent / semi-opaque characteristic, it completely changes the fundamental color of the manicure. I have found it turns a black base almost blue, although not uniformly so.
So since I couldn’t get the YSL La Laque Couture Les Sequins Manicure to behave strictly black and white, I decided to just go with the flow. I ended up slapping N° 58 Nuit Blanche in a haphazard way all over N° 59 Nuit Noire, avoiding the edges, to create a sort of “galaxy” effect! As you can see, Nuit Blanche turned the uniform black of Nuit Noire into patchy blue interspersed with some pink and green as well.
Overall, I wished Nuit Noire performed better with a more shiny finish and did not require 3 coats to be completely opaque. Worse, I found these polishes to take a longer time to dry than usual for YSL La Laque Coutures. I have very mixed feelings about Nuit Blanche as I found the gel-like patchy texture and semi-opacity to be a little challenging to work. However, I really do like the effect of slapping it over a dark base like Nuit Noire! And of note is the fact that these polishes seem to last even longer than usual – I went 5 amazing days before seeing the 1st chip, which is unheard of for me!! The downside of it all was, the combination deposits so much gunk on the nails, it takes a crazy amount of work to remove!
So what do you think? Will you be picking these up?
I think I like the idea behind these more than the execution. Your words had me expecting some polishes that would blow me away, but even though they are pretty, they seem to be too much work to be worth it.
Still, I liked the effect of Nuit Blanche as a top coat.
Oh dear, did i oversell these? LOL! Unfortunately it seems that everytime YSL tries to do something unusual and interesting with their polishes, they get it wrong.
When the glitter craze in nail polish began, I got some and frankly in the indie brands there were so many polishes much more original than these. But foil method or no, they are a big PITA to remove and wind up damaging the nails, at least for me. Only if something is unique and gorgeous do I bother. And these don’t fit the bill.
Hey Alison, yes I agree that these are not very original, nor are they very well executed. I had very high hopes, because they are YSL… but when I applied them, it was a yikes moment. And yes, major PITA to remove!!!!
I like how Nuit looks in the bottle. But three coats I guess is too much to wait it will dry)) Maybe you should try only one coat with the black base polish and there is no need to apply 3 coats.
Yes that is probably the way I’d wear Nuit Noire – 1 coat over a dark plain base. For the purpose of the review, I had to see how far it’d go on its own. 😉 It takes a long time to dry too… and major pain to remove!
Oh well, I was waiting for my order to arrive (which takes forever) but now that I read this, I am not so keen on them arriving anyway. I don’t like a textured look so probably I have to apply like 3 coats of top coat on top to make it even. Taking it off is another problem, you can try the aluminum foil technique though.
All aside, I like you Galaxy effect there, you inspire me with you creative nail ideas :-*
No actually just 1 coat of one of those gel-top coats will suffice, but it is a long wait for 3 coats to dry. I think i’ll need acetone to remove these quickly, cos right now i’m using those Crabtree & Evelyn wipes which works wonders, are moisturizing and don’t stink… but the textures in the polish are ripping the wipes to shreds and making life very difficult for me. I did really like the final NOTD though, i’m glad you enjoyed it too! :*
Hey Linda, thanks for showcasing these! I like how both of them look, but generally speaking I prefer nail polishes with no texture, so I don’t think either of them is for me!
Yes you’re right… i don’t like bumpy nails… wasn’t expecting these to be textured!!!
Sad to hear your mixed feelings about these! I got them over the weekend, mostly because I’m a collector. The SA did tell me to use both as a top coat.
The trouble with Nuit Blanche as a top coat is that it completely changes the color of whatever is below it. And I can’t see Nuit Noire as a top coat as it’s black!