Journeying Into Orange

I'll admit it: I always thought I hated orange. I know yellow doesn't suit my skin tone at all, and since orange is right there next to yellow on the color spectrum, my assumption has always been that orange is a bad color for me, too. I have no orange clothing or accessories, and only about four bottles of orange (or at least, orange-ish) nail polish that hardly see any use. So needless to say, when I was browsing through Sephora recently and found myself inexplicably drawn to the bright orange shade in Deborah Lippmann's 80's Rewind* collection, I was a teensy bit shocked. "Why am I even buying this polish?!" I asked my husband. "I hate orange!"

*Someone at Deborah Lippmann really needed to consult an editor when creating this collection, because the name should be written as '80s Rewind, not 80's Rewind. Call me, DL!

Well, as it turns out—and as you've no doubt guessed by now—I actually don't hate orange! I just hadn't found the right shade for me.

As soon as I started brushing on Deborah Lippmann Don't Stop Believin' (all the 80's Rewind shades are named after songs from the 1980s, which is terribly charming, in my opinion), I was in love! The polish itself went on absolutely flawlessly, and the strong red tones make it a really flattering orange, even for someone like me with lots of yellow tones in her skin.

I loved the polish color so much that I almost didn't want to do any nail art over it, but in the end I decided to roll with the '80s vibe and add some brightly colored accents. I did the braided/fishtail stripes (inspired by Work / Play / Polish) with a small liner brush and two butter LONDON polishes: HRH and Slapper. I really love how the braid turned out and I'd like to do a whole manicure of braided nails someday, but as I've mentioned before, I'm a very s-l-o-w nail artist and this took me way longer than I expected. So I either need to work on my speed or save a lot more time for doing braids in the future!

The braid is pretty striking, even on just one nail, so I kept things simple and added one little dot of HRH and Slapper at the cuticle of my other nails.

I'd love to hear what you think of this one—are you a fan of orange polish? What's your all-time favorite orange?

Thanks for looking!

PS - If you're one of the '80s nerds who caught the connection between this post's title and the content... you're the best! Also, I'm terrible, I know.