I thought it would be fun and interesting and hopefully helpful to swatch some old polishes. I'll be adding installments to this topic every so often. The thing with really old polish is that when you find it at beauty supply stores, salons or flea markets you really have no way to fact check it. What I mean by that is, there are usually no swatches or references online to compare your polish to in order to find out if it has been frankened, or what exactly has been done to it.It's insanely common for nail salons to franken polish. They aren't being malicious or trying to decieve you, they simply want their polish area to look nice and they need to make room for more colors so they often pour mostly empty polishes into one bottle and stick it back on the shelf. This normally isn't a problem for everyday salon goers. They like a color on the rack, get a manicure with it and don't care what the polish name is or even think about whether it's a franken. The problem arises when a salon has a nail polish sale and a nail fanatic finds a hidden gem of a rare or discontinued polish on the racks, takes it home and looks it up to find it is not what it is supposed to be. Even worse, a blogger buys a franken, and brings it home to find there are no swatches of it, so puts her own swatches online and the whole nail comunity ends up with an incorrect reference. There are lots of things that can happen to your polish before you buy it. It can be thinned, frankened or even straight up replaced with something else. So, for this reason please keep in mind that I have NO IDEA if the polishes and polish names I am showing when I swatch old polish are correct. My latest find at a lightly traveled beauty supply store was a hoard of old Zoyas! They had a crap ton of them but I only got three because it was extremely clear to me that they had been thinned half to death and I wasn't sure if I would even be able to use them. The store seriously thinned them to the consistency of WATER. I was able to get them opaque enough for pictures (FIVE COATS EACH!!!) and I have got them all sitting out with the lids off to thicken them up. I'll be going back to get one of each color soon.
They only had very light colors like nudes and whites but it's still cool, I think. I photographed each polish outdoors in direct sunlight and in the shade. Here are the swatches. I wish I knew how old these babies are! Shade.
Sun.
Shade.
Sun.
Shade.
Sun.
Even though these colors aren't my style or taste I still think they are neat. It really is a testament to the quality of Zoya nail polish that these old polishes that have been through god knows what still held up to the test of time. They dried FAST and weren't gummy or goopey. They also had fantastic luster in their shimmer and shine.
LOVE, MM
