Essie Gel Couture Review & Photos

Essie Gel Couture

Essie has always been one of my favourite nail brands because of their amazing on trend colour selection and staying power, so when I heard that they had just released their own version of the two step gel, no light formula, I squealed with excitement! The Essie Gel Couture range consists of an amazing 42 shades, as well as a gel topcoat to seal in your colour. I just picked up the one shade to try out, so here's my thoughts.

Price
This is a two step method, so you would need to purchase the top coat as well as your chosen shades for the system to work properly. Both the colours and top coat retail for £9.99 each, which is a bit more expensive than your average drugstore nail polish and especially if your having to buy both the colour and top coat together, but this is a gel system, that claims to last.

Packaging
I love the new bottles for the Gel Couture range as they are unique, elegant and classy, and compared to the original bottles, these still identify as Essie, but with a twist! Inside the brush is short and flat and the base is twisted to allow for ease of application and an even coverage.

Application
On the How To video it advises that no base coat is needed, but on the Essie website it does mention using a base. Personally having tested this out I would recommend using a simple base coat, as it protects your nail plate and also helps the colour glide on that little be easier if you have ridged nails. When I first tested this out I didn't use a base coat as I wanted to see how this would wear without, upon application the colour glides on really nicely because of the flat, short brush and the shade I picked, Zip Me Up was opaque in two coats and dried semi-matte.

I choose this mint shade as I thought it looked very similar to the iconic Mint Candy Apple, except this shade is shot with a pretty iridescence through it. The top coat had a thick, plump consistency and glided on nicely too. This dried relatively quickly but not as quick as the Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat, although it did have a lovely shine to it.

Essie Zip Me Up

Longevity
The Gel Couture system states that this can last up to 14 days, now this is a big claim for a gel polish that doesn't cure under light and out of all the two step gel polish systems I've tried, none are yet to beat my regular salon formula gel cured polish.

I tried this twice without a base coat and I have mentioned recently in a video that my nails are not the best at the moment, so an ordinary manicure tends to only last two days and three if I'm lucky and that's with prepping the nail and using a base and top coat. So overall I defiantly don't think this would of lasted two weeks on me, but I really did get a good five days wear, before I started to notice wear on the tips and slight chipping on the 6th and 7th day, so for my nails that is pretty impressive.

The top coat helped keep the colour shiny, but I think by the end of the week I was ready to take the colour off as it didn't look as polished to when I had first applied this.

Overall Thoughts
This two step gel system from Essie is not a ground-breaking, new to the market concept, but this does claim to last up to two weeks, which is a brave statement to make considering this doesn't cure under a light. For me this lasted around five days before I started to have slight wear and chipping, but I do think this is still pretty impressive considering my manicure is lucky if it lasts two days!

Yes the price is slightly higher than your regular drugstore nail polish and you do have to invest in the top coat too, but overall the Essie Gel Couture range has a remarkable colour selection, perfect packaging, easy application and a durable top coat, which makes this accessible range a winner in my books. I do want to try a wider selection of shades, so I will keep you updated.

I award the Essie Gel Couture range 4.3 out of 5