Essie Summer 2009: The North Fork Collection

This is the first installment of Essie's summer 2009 releases, and I am quite excited about it for two reasons:

This collection consists of all blues. This is Essie we're talking about. Yes, BLUES!

This may be a sign of things to come- Essie doing blues? Three of them? What other cool colors does Essie have planned? I hope no more sheer pinks and nudes like usual!


I'll get to my review in a moment, but you can also check out reviews for Essie North Fork at The Nailphile, and here at The Crystal Files.

One more thing I'll say about this collection before I post the pictures- These colors resemble the three turquoise shades from the 'mystery' imaginary collection than they do the ones in the press release. YES!!!!



Greenport, full sunlight and indoors. A relaxed yet vibrant turquoise creme. Can you believe this is an Essie polish?! It's so hot! It has some similarities to Misa Dirty Sexy Money and Barielle Sweet Addiction, but it's not a duplicate of them. I hoped that I would see a color like this in OPI's South Beach collection, but I'm content with having it from Essie.



Shelter Island, sunlight and indoors. A bright, cheerful sky blue. Another shocker! A bright blue, I almost can't believe my eyes. Essie did a bright blue. Hallelujah! I love this color a lot, but it is very similar to a lot of other bright blues like Barielle Swizzle Stix, OPI Just Groovy, Zoya Yummy, Misa something-with-a-really-long-name-I-can't-remember.... But still, it's hot and you won't hear me complaining about another beautiful blue.




Sag Harbor, sunlight and indoors. A light, slightly greyed pastel blue shimmer. I don't think I have very many colors like this. It is a little similar to some of Essie's discontinued blues like St. Barth's Blue, but at the moment I can't think of another color that looks like this. The name Sag Harbor always makes me laugh. There is this clothing brand called Sag Harbor that has styles mainly geared for the retirement-age crowd and I always thought that was a funny name for the brand. I never realized it was the name of a place. Sag Harbor... tee hee.


The formula on these is fan-freakin'-tastic. All are opaque in two coats, no streaks, no sheerness, no bubbles, no runny globby three-free formula, NOTHING! Just pure smooth creamy pigmented polish. They dry super fast even without topcoat- this could be due to the fact that the polish doesn't require more than two thin coats or it could be the formula. Either way, I love it. Three-free formulas seem to be improving.

From the moment I saw the first promo image of these I knew I'd like them, but I didn't think I'd like them as much as I do. Like I mentioned before, these resemble the set of blue imaginary polishes more than the 'real' image from the press release. Observe:


This is the image from the press release, which is the 'official' correct image from Essie.




This is the mistake image that was sent in error along with the press release.


See what I mean?? It was the imaginary ones after all!!! Now if they would only release the trio with the green, golden-white and yellow....

By the way, Shelter Island, Sag Harbor and Greenport are all limited edition shades which are officially available starting in April and will retail for $9.