No Punches Pulled: Burberry Light Gold 107 Nail Polish, Limited Edition

Ooooh! A Burberry polish! A limited-edition Burberry Light Gold 107! Lookit that packaging! Lookit that bottle! Lookit how lovely! And the swatches...

Don’t let the packaging or the name trick you like it tricked me. I ain’t gonna pull no punches ’cause that’s not how I roll.

This is Burberry Light Gold 107 ($25, Holt Renfrew), a limited-edition holiday nail polish shade. I thought I would love it. But I really, really don't.

The Burberry Light Gold 107 nail polish brush wand is flattened, so its sides don’t meet the edge of the bottle opening. You can’t get the excess off the wand as you pull it from the bottle, so polish blobs down to overload the brush. Grrrr. I want to be able to control the amount of polish on my brush at all times – for $25, that’s my right.

The brush itself is fairly inflexible. It doesn’t fan out. And the edges are too squared off. There’s no curve action to help achieve my usual super-close clean line at the cuticle. The best I can get is a clean line with a cuticle gap.

You’ve seen my swatches. I don’t do “cuticle gap.”

Now the Burberry Light Gold 107 nail polish formula: it’s thin and under-pigmented. You have to work fast and straight and evenly to minimize streaking. And guess what? You can’t. So that’s streaks + a cuticle gap.

I can work with a streaky polish and make it look good if I get a good brush. I can work with a crummy brush and make the mani look great if the polish formula is good. Put a sub-par brush with a sub-par polish and you’ve lost me forever.

Please enjoy the imprecise cuticle line in these Burberry Light Gold 107 photos – it disturbs me more than you know. And if you’re looking at the pictures and thinking “It’s not that streaky,” know that I’m looking at the pictures and thinking “Ugh. Horrifying.”

I did not expect to despise this beautiful bottle of polish, and I feel kinda bad telling it like it is. But there you are. That’s my opinion.

If you want a beautiful streak-free chrome finish in just one easy coat, run to Estee Lauder for one of these – it would be $25 better spent.

Have you tried this Burberry Light Gold 107 nail polish?

Mani ’n photos by Karen Falcon (her mum learned her that if she didn’t have anything nice to say, she shouldn’t say anything at all. She’s sorry, Mum. It had to be done) ©2013 BEAUTYGEEKS/imabeautygeek.com