To quote the late, great, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez, "they say my life is 10 shades of gray" — or rather, our nail polishes are. The Dickensian Edition by StrangeBeautiful is a collection of 10 polishes in varying shades of grays and blacks. Creator Jane Schub says she was inspired by Charles Dickens, the Brothers Grimm, Edward Gorey's The Loathsome Couple, a "velvety lump of coal, and the dull, yet metallic shards of broken shale that line the hills of the Hudson Valley."
While we wouldn't go so far as to wax poetic on all things bleak and foreboding, we are kind of digging the gothic polishes. Each metallic hue is indeed different than the last, although most of the variations are quite subtle. A range of shimmers help transform the shades with a washed-out rainbow of undertones, from lilac and mauve to greenish-gold. There's no denying the polishes are great quality — super-opaque, multi-dimensional shimmer, not easily chipped — but we're not sure we can stomach the $85 price tag. No one really needs 10 different shades of gray nail polish, especially at that price, but apparently there were more than enough polish fiends out there with deep pockets — the set is currently sold out at Lucky Scent, the set's exclusive retailer.
Would you drop that much dough on nearly-identical nail polishes, or do you think this is depressingly whack?
Photo: Courtesy of Lucky Scent