essie gel couture Nail Polish Colors
essie gel couture bottles, L to R: first fitting, in-vest in style, of corset
Updated 2024.07.02. This post contains affiliate links and Lots of Lacquer will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links.
In my opinion, essie gel couture is one of the best long wearing nail polish lines on the market today and it’s one of our readers’ favorite longwear lines.
This line also has clean ingredients.
When doing our latest inventory, we’ve run a chemical check on essie’s gel couture formulas using CosDna.com (a cosmetic ingredient analyzer recommended by my dermatologist), and all of them are quite clean as far as ingredients are concerned; meaning these polishes are good for your nails.
Despite the name, you do not need to cure essie’s gel couture under a UV/LED lamp. It’s a regular nail polish that’s designed to have a “gel-like” wear in terms of longevity and shine.
It applies and dries like any nail polish. You could call it “gel-inspired” nail polish.
Compared to the standard essie nail polish line, essie gel couture has a longer weartime. I usually get around 5-7 days of weartime; where the standard essie nail polish line usually lasts me around 2-4 days.
To use the gel couture system, you need a color coat and a top coat, no base coat is needed.
This makes the gel couture line a more economical line to invest in because:
You can skip buying a base coat
Longer wear means you will need to redo your manicure less
The majority of the formulas are designed to be 2 coaters
These factors all bring down your total manicure costs. You have one less bottle to buy and with the bottles you do buy, your formula use is slowed down, due to the longer wear and fewer coats, decreasing your repurchase interval requirements.
If you’re the type of person who calculates their purchases by selecting those that deliver maximum joy with minimum investment, essie gel couture is a line to consider.
And that’s not all! The gel couture top coat is also a quick drying top coat, as well as being a longwearing top coat. The essie gel couture top coat turns the gel couture line into a quick drying, long wearing line.
Below, you will see swatches of three best selling essie gel couture colors, first fitting, in-vest in style and of corset:
essie gel couture first fitting swatch
essie gel couture first fitting swatch
essie gel couture first fitting
Shown in 2 coats, first fitting is a crisp, clean opaque ivory white.
It goes on smoothly, self levels and dries quickly - no chunkiness or brush lines at all. I finished the above manicure within 20 minutes of going to bed and woke up with zero bed sheet smudges.
I really like that this white is fully opaque in 2 coats; many whites require 3 coats.
essie gel couture in-vest in style swatch
essie gel couture in-vest in style swatch
essie gel couture in-vest in style
Shown in 2 coats and from the fashion freedom collection, in-vest in style is a dark emerald green creme polish with blue undertones.
If you like essie off tropic, another best selling dark green from the brand, you’ll also like in-vest in style.
My favorite colors are dark, rich greens like this, so I’m very happy to see them coming to the forefront as popular nail shades.
essie gel couture of corset swatch
essie gel couture of corset swatch
essie gel couture of corset
Shown in 2 coats, of corset is a sheer, warm chestnut beige. If you have a light to medium tan skin tone, this is a great “your nails but better” option. It’s also an ideal work and interview friendly shade.
I’ve had my eye on this one for a while, and was so happy to see it make it to the best seller list; I had to pick it up to share.
All in all, essie gel couture is an economical, quick drying, long lasting nail polish line that is worth the hype.
As a final note on how much I love this line as a nail polish collector: it has taken me 3 years to share with you all of my nail colors. I just finished posting and fully interacting with all of my collection, and the first thing I did when I got to the top of my nail polish mountain was invest more in this line.
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