I’m later getting this review out than I would have liked, but purchased collections tend to get pushed to the back burner. I’ve had this collection sitting in my swatch rack since early September, after being released at the end of August. That’s okay though, it’s still fall! The Color Club Matte Rouge collection consists of 7 vibrant semi-textured matte shades, some of which say fall while others say ‘It’s still summer.’
Plum-p and Juicy
Plum-p and Juicy is a deep plum purple that dries to a semi-textured matte finish. My swatch is 2 coats with no top coat. While this is one of the prettier colors in the collection, I found it to have one of the worst formulas. It’s quite thick and applied very patchy, with virtually no self-leveling.
First Base Only
First Base Only is a dark fuschia pink that dries to a semi-textured matte finish. I was relieved to find that the formula on this wasn’t nearly as thick. It went on relatively smoothly and had only had minor issues with self-leveling. My swatch shows 2 coats with no top coat.
Lips Don’t Lie
Lips Don’t Lie is a deep dusty lavender, it’s a difficult color to describe. Again a problematic formula, it’s pretty thick and I’m actually wearing 2 coats on some nails and 3 coats on others in an attempt to achieve even coverage. Sadly I still wasn’t able to.
Make Out Maven
Make Out Maven is a deep rustic brown which dries to a semi-textured matte finish. Same thick, patchy, gloopy formula that I found with others. This one never seemed to want to dry fully either, despite my 2 thin coats.
(Is this review over yet?) *sigh*
Spin the Bottle
Spin the Bottle is a dusty peachy pink that dries to a semi-textured matte finish. The first thing you will notice is that it’s not fully opaque on all of my nails, even on the formulas with a slightly thinner consistency I found achieving even coverage quite difficult. This wasn’t as thick as the others, but very difficult to work with. This is 2 coats, I just couldn’t bring myself to do a third. :/
Perfect Pout
Perfect Pout is a vibrant coral orange, almost neon. This shade says summer to me. This is one of the easier ones to work with in this collection, the consistency is much more of what I would expect, and I was able to achieve even coverage with minor additional effort on my part. What you see here is 2 coats.
Mother Pucker
This isn’t exactly the term I was using by the time I got to this last polish, never the less it is the right name. Mother Pucker is a bright pink leaning red. Another thick formula but was manageable. I was able to achieve even level coverage with some additional effort. My swatch is 2 coats no top coat.
My Thoughts: I had really high hopes for this collection. A nice mix of fall colors along with some more vibrant summer type colors, and I love matte polish. Unfortunately all of my hopes were dashed very quickly. The majority of these have what I would consider very poor formulas, a couple others were okay, while only one even made it into my ‘good’ column. None were great or exciting, or even easy to work with. So unless these colors are just absolute must haves for you, I personally would skip this collection.
Color Club is most well known for their amazing holo’s and good solid cremes. They even released some spectacular duochromes this fall too. Perhaps they tried to release too many collections at once? Perhaps mattes aren’t their forte? I really can’t say, I can only speculate. So while this particular collection will likely get pushed to the back of a dark helmer drawer, I do recognize the brand overall as well liked and respected. They just missed the ball on this collection.
Until next time, stay polished!
