Nire's Desire PRANA v Crows Toes INDIAN SUMMER and More Red Purple Duochromes

Hi Goddesses

A long time ago, in a blog post far, far away, I promised to compare 2 red-purple duochromes.  Although I loved both polishes, I loved one a little bit more, which meant fans of the other one kind of dared me to prove it lol.  Well, yeh, I forget to do things, so here, finally, we are.

First off, let me say this.  Both of these polishes ROCK.  They are both too cool for school.  They are both red-purple duochromes, and once upon a time, I would have said red-purple duochromes could do no wrong.  However, that is no longer true, as these 2 polishes have raised the bar sooooo high, any other r-p-d, has a lot to contend with.


So let's start with a couple of swatch photos of Crows Toes Indian Summer -

and a couple of Nire's Desire Prana -

Do you need to own both?  No, I don't think so.  They're not utterly identical, but they're not so different you need both.  Let's look at them side by side.  In all the following photos, Indian Summer is in the middle (middle and ring fingers), with Prana on the outer fingers (pinkie and index).

Just one word before we start splitting hairs.  I think it was a mistake to paint my nails in the order that I did - I think they should have been alternate.  As you will know if you are a duochrome lover, the movement of the light alters the polish across your fingers, so I think if I'd painted P-IS-P-IS, we'd have gotten a better comparison.

That said, there are only 2 differences to my eye -

* Prana has more red.  This was the main reason it was my preferred polish.  I felt the duochrome was more finely balanced, and I liked that I saw more red.  For me, IS leaned much more purple

* Indian Summer has a "coarser" appearance - and I don't mean that in a negative way.  If you look closely, you can see shimmer in there too.  So IS actually has more complexity than Prana.

So I am sorry if I sound like I'm sitting on the fence, but I love them both, I do.  For me and my skin tone though, Prana just nudges it.


And this is where I come off the fence.  There have been other red-purple duochromes.  My favourite USED to be this one, by HITS, called So Unique.  This has a holographic "dust" to it - 

Then there's this Rimmel one, Purple Reign - clearly a second rate companion -

And then finally, ILNP Undenied.  Not *quite* the same as the others, and I can't decide whether it's deliberately different, or just poor.  Either way, it's too brush-strokey for me, and just not special.

So there you go - 5 polishes, 2 of which are utterly epic.  I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments.

Crows Toes - Indian Summer

Hi Goddesses

So last week, I caused a bit of furore on the blog when I posted a swatch of Prana by Nire's Desires and declared it better than Indian Summer.

The lovelies in the Crows Toes Minions group disagreed with me - and that's fine, as each to her own opinion.  Also, there is no denying Crows Toes polishes are the bomb.  I've been a huge supporter of Lauri's polishes since the start, and indeed, many of her polishes have made it into my end of year Bests lists.

I'm not going to do the Prana / Indian Summer comparison today (today we're just going to linger over IS), but more than anything I want to stress that just as with people, you can love more than 1 polish at a time, and whilst you may love one polish more, that doesn't have to mean you love the other polish much less.

Let me confuse you more lol.  I actually really like Indian Summer.  These photos are some of the best I have ever taken, and it's much better than the similar ILNP version.

There is a lot of exquisite stuff going on - the shimmer, the shift and the varying hues of violet and purple.  I mean, look at these photos, what's not to love?

Well in the end, I think it comes down to personal taste.  Whilst I do have the utmost admiration for this polish, it doesn't speak to me the way Prana does.  Personally - for me - this rests too much on it's violet laurels, and has a metallic brashness that didn't sit well on me.  Don't get me wrong, in other lights it was absolutely perfect, but my personal issue with duochromes is that you're often stuck with them in a certain kind of shade-lock, and where this one stuck wasn't the shade I wanted it to settle on.

Very soon, I'll have the comparison post, and as requested, I'll also include a couple of other similar polishes.   Is Indian Summer gorgeous?   Absolutely.    Am I glad I bought it?   Yes.   In fact, I'd give it a 9/10, and that's where I'm going to leave it before we do the comparisons.