Urban Decayed. (Urban Decay Nail Enamel)

Member Name: heatherrr13

Product:	Urban Decay Nail Enamel
Date:	23/11/05 (580 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: glossy, not tested on animals

Disadvantages: chips very easily

I have a bottle of Urban Decay nail varnish in Black. I needed some black nail varnish, and I decided to go for Urban Decay because I'd heard good things about some of their other products.

Urban Decay was launched in January 1996, rebelling against a cosmetics World filled with pink. They launched their first campaign under the slogan "does pink make you puke?" It is a popular brand, known for its alternative colours and trends.

Urban Decay are one of those brands that spend time thinking about the desig of their products and packaging. The nail varnish comes in a thick glass pot, which contains 10ml of varnish, I'm not sure exactly but it looks as if it contains about the same as other brands' nail varnishes. Like I said, the glass seems very thick and doesn't seem like it would break easily at all so that's reassuring. You can easily see how much varnish is left as the glass is perfectly clear. The front of the bottle says Urban Decay in capital letters, and then has the Urban Decay logo underneath it, which is a bit like a star. The lid of the bottle is about two thirds of the size of the bottle, is silver, and has the star logo on the top of it. On the back of the bottle is a sticker that lists all the ingrediants; nearly all of them being long complicated words that I can't even pronounce. It also lists all the products that the varnish may contain. Underneath all this is the statement "We don't do animal testing. How could anyone?" It also has a US and a UK address.

So, onto the actual varnish. The lid is quite tightly screwed on but I can open it and I'm hardly strong. As is the norm with nail varnishes the brish is attached to the lid; it's pretty long so I'm sure it will reach right to the dredges of the bottle. The smell is pretty strong, but I wouldn't say it's particularly different to the smell of any other nail varninshes; you can't buy a nail varnish and not expect it to smell of chemicals.

Like I said I bought this in black, so I wasn't sure if I'd need to apply more than one layer. I dipped the brush into the bottle and wiped it on the side as it is very thick. I cover my nails in three strokes and then leave them to dry. At first the varnish seems extraordinarily thick, but as it dries it thins out a bit. It does dry pretty quickly, unusually for me I didn't manage to smudge it before it had dried! As I said, once the polish had dried it had thinned out quite considerably from when I first appleid it, so I felt that a second coating was definiftely needed. After applying this second coat my nails looked very glossy and the varnish looked very thick. Usually I then put a layer of clear varnish over the colour to firstly make the colour gloss a bit more and scondly to protect it from chipping, but because this varnish looked so shiny I didn't think it needed it.

However, it's downhill very quickly from this point on. I put my nail varnish on in the evening, and by the following evening quite a bit had chipped off from both the top and bottom of my nails. I was definitely regretting not covering my nails with another layer of clear varnish. As the days went on the varnish chipped more and more; doing things like the washing up were a disaster for my painted talons, and even having a shower chipped a considerable amount off. Because the colour I had chosen was so dark any chips were extremely noticeable. This nail varnish is not cheap and I feel that for the money it should be more resiliant. Why should I have to coat my nails in a clear varnish on top of their product?

Overall, I'm not sure whether I would buy an Urban Decay varnish again. I would definitely try a different brand when this bottle runs out, but I will also continue to use this one until it is all gone. Next time I use it I will definitely coat my nails in clear polish after I have applied the colour, hopefully this will make a difference. This product hasn't encouraged me to try any other Urban Decay products, next time I want to buy some nail varnish I am going to experiment with some other varnishes, and hopefully find one that is more chip-proof!

I bought this nail varnish from Boots, but it was quite a while ago now and I can't remember how much I paid for it exactly. I just looked on urbandecay.com, and on there the varnish is $9.50 (that's US dollars).

I'd give this 2.89 out of 5.

Summary: Chips far too easily for a repeat purchase.