Orly Androgynie - The Ups and Downs of a Flawed Polish

When Orly's Holiday 2011 was first announce the chatter was all about Androgynie: black jelly with a beautiful amber, green, and blue color shifting hex glitter as well as small gold flakes.

What? Madness? Faaaaabulous!

Unfortunately there weren't enough glitters to really maintain the thrall, and it soon fell to the wayside as a "meh" polish, oft faulted for needing to be sat on its head for a few hours or more to shift scant glitter from its sunken grave at the bottom of the bottle.

Wah.

I found this bottle at Ross over the holidays and, of course, bought it. It has a unique glitter. The green/blue/amber shift kills with gorgeosity.

But, sadly it doesn't age well.

Here's a swatch:

Three coats, they are over black and quite a beautiful glitter, I don't recall the black base, but something generic.

I placed the bottle upside-down for only a few hours to mix the glitter. Too bad there isn't more!

Here's where it doesn't age well.

If you look closely at the above photo, you will see on my middle finger (second from the left) a silver hex that seems puckered.
Also note a few silver pieces:
- left of the "O" in the word "Orly
- directly above that about the same distance as the width of the base of my pinkie.
- in the middle of the large "O" in the bottom half there are four.
Enlarge, see how there are these puckered nickel colored silver bits.

What is happening? Well, for some reason the solvent is affecting the glitter in such a way that the glitter is falling apart.
What you can't see is small folded pieces of plastic that once coated the glitter pieces still mixed in. Not many, but enough to notice them.

Insane.

So, this means I need to wear this polish fast.

Go ahead and google Orly Androgynie. When it first came out you see blog post after blog post with perfectly beautiful glitters.
These glitters have apparently suffered from the aging process.

Ah well. Won't say I'm not disappointed, I am glad that I only purchased this on sale. Still. There is the ever present concern about glitter degrading in a polish over time. I've got a lot of glitter polish and this is the second one I've blogged about that appears to be showing it's age. The previous one was a much older Sally Hansen silver glitter. Androgynie's early demise is even more disconcerting because it's a pretty new polish by comparison. (apologies for not finishing this thought before I posted it, must have been half awake. yolks)

There you have it. A polish with so much promise that has not only not fulfilled it, but to later begin to disintegrate!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!