Taboo Dreams... Come True!

Today I'd like to talk about dream polishes.

Everyone has them, right? The polishes (and/or brands) that you admire from afar and fantasize about owning one day, but that remain frustratingly out of reach because they're discontinued, from another country, too expensive, etc. For me, this dream polish has always been anything Chanel—and, more specifically, Chanel Taboo. Everyone raves about Chanel polish and I've coveted Taboo forever, but because that one little bottle costs what I'd normally spend on two or three of another brand, I could never quite justify buying it for myself. 

Thankfully, however, my birthday rolled around recently, and because I have very cool parents who are kind enough to indulge my nail obsession, I received an awesome gift from them: my dream polish! 

As I hoped and expected, Taboo really is a dream to use. I generally brace myself for a lengthy cleanup after applying dark, shimmery polishes: my application skill are pretty good, but definitely not perfect, and dark polishes are excellent at getting everywhere when you're trying to paint clean lines. (That goes double for dark shimmers.) So, needless to say, I was beyond delighted when Taboo applied smoothly and cleanly on every nail—literally almost zero cleanup required here! And this is two coats, because... I just like to do two coats, I guess, but I could have easily gone with one and still had great coverage.

Wear time for this polish is also pretty amazing: eight days (at least)! I finally changed it because I was just ready for something new and I think I had one tiny little chip on one nail. I mean, wow.

My one minor quibble is that the polish looks quite a bit different from bottle to nails. I didn't realize this would be the case and I was actually a tiny bit disappointed at first, but the more I looked at all the depth and subtle sparkle of the color on my nails, the more I fell in love with it. Definitely a challenge to photograph, though! I did my best to color-correct and show the polish as it looks in real life (which is why my skin tones are a little wonky), but I'm still not sure I got all the way there.

I actually feel sort of strange having polished-but-plain nails for any length of time, so I couldn't resist the temptation to add a little something to my Taboo base after the first day. I had a really hard time deciding what could possibly do this amazing polish justice, but in the end, I decided to keep things simple and incorporate another unique polish I received as a gift (this time, from my sister!).

This is OPI Next Stop... The Bikini Zone stamped over Taboo with the tiger stripe image from MoYou London Pro Plate 04. I loved how this looked in real life—so deep and sparkly, and so many amazing shades of purple—but if anything, the stamping took a difficult polish to photograph and made it... even harder to photograph? Go figure! I guess this is just one of those manicures that was always destined to look more impressive in person.

Thank you all for looking & reading, and thank you to my family for the wonderful gifts!