China Glaze Retro Diva Fall 2009 Collection

I love China Glaze, it is easily one of my top 3 favorite polishes in the world, maybe even #1. They have endless colors, nice jellies and shimmers, super glitters like Ruby Pumps, and they have the GLASS FLECKS, which rock all corners of ass. This year has not been their best year, but they have a super bunch of polishes already, so some slack can be cut.

The Retro Diva Collection for Fall 2009 features their regular formula, which is good. It's not the best or the worst formula, but it is very good and easy to use. I make sure my brush stick is scraped and wipe one side of the brush against the bottle opening so I have a good load of polish, but only on one side of the brush. This minimizes sloppy application.

As for the colors, if you like orange/brown, purple and dark red you are in luck. If not, you're kinda screwed. The collection is mostly metallic frosts, with a few simple shimmers and one drool-worthy glass fleck thrown in. It's lovely if you like the colors. I do have to be honest, while I adore these jewel tones, which are rich and glowing like Zoya's Truth or Dare Collections, I prefer the big grain shimmer of Zoyas' offering to these metallic frosts. But that's a personal opinion on style. These are pretty polishes, and eye-catching, but I know I am going to reach for the Zoyas more often. No biggie, China Glaze is an incredible line, and I hear from AllLacqueredUp's tweets that they are going to put out Emerald Sparkle with gold glass fleck for the holidays!! Who can beat THAT?!

So this collection is a lot like the summer Custom Kicks collection, in that there are kinda too many polishes with similar colors. A fewer similar colors would have been nice. Here we go, arranged by color!

China Glaze Cords, a kind of grey-taupe metallic frost:


China Glaze Far Out, a warm brown frost that I like but makes me worry about the "Poo" factor.:


China Glaze Cruisin', an orange metallic frost. A jelly frost, if you will, it's sheerish.:


China Glaze Free Love, an orange frost. We needed this AND Cruisin', how?:


China Glaze Street Racing, a metallic frost in a super red-orange sort of blood orange shade. I adore this one!:


China Glaze Drive In, a darker orange-red metallic frost:


China Glaze Thunderbird, a gorgeous wine colored frost with metallic shimmer to it. Love this one.:


China Glaze Stroll, the queen of the collection. An incredible burgundy jelly with glass fleck shimmer. Just gorgeous and so much better than the picture. This polish is a must have.:


China Glaze Short & Sassy. Easing from red to purple here, and back to the metallic frosts. Pretty!:


China Glaze Skate Night, a juicy red-purple metallic frost:


China Glaze Stella, a yummy Tyrian metallic frost:


China Glaze Let's Groove, a gorgeous grape shimmer. This is actually tons of shimmer in a very dark almost black purple jelly. It reminds me a lot of Rimmel Night Before. Stunning.:


There you have it. Not earth-shattering for the most part, but if all I get out of this is Stroll, it would be enough.