swatch: illamasqua hectic

for the past couple of days i've been wearing illamasqua hectic, a polish that unfortunately didn't make it to sephora stores stateside. here's how it looks on me in indirect sunlight:


and here's how it looks on me in indoor lighting (i.e. most of the time)... quite a bit more browned:


when i applied the first coat of this polish, i almost wanted to laugh at how horrible it looked with my coloring - it was basically a sickly green version of my skin, really awful. but as i built up a couple more layers of this shade, the color deepened considerably, and i found that it wasn't actually so bad. that said, i wouldn't exactly go running to recommend it to other tan and olive-toned girls...

hectic is a bit more sheer than most of the illamasqua polishes i own, requiring three coats plus some additional touch-ups for opacity. besides the lack of heavy pigmentation, however, the formula was quite good. and now i'm really looking forward to trying out my mac dry martini, as it looks to be quite a bit darker than hectic and will thus hopefully provide a better contrast with my skin.

by the way, if you're in the market for a browned olive green, you have a few options besides hectic: rescue beauty lounge no more war, the aforementioned mac dry martini, and obsessive compulsive cosmetics swamp thing. check out flinty's great comparison of the last two here!

as i mentioned earlier, hectic is not currently available in the united states. i received mine as a gift from a generous friend, but if you're interested in getting one for yourself, hectic and other uk-exclusive polishes can be purchased from illamasqua directly. unfortunately, buying from the illamasqua site is quite pricey - the polishes retail for £12.50 (= $20.63) each, plus shipping to anywhere outside the eu is £7.50 (= $12.38). all that said, illamasqua is currently offering free shipping worldwide on orders of £65 (= $107.25) or more; details on the promotion are available here.

bf says: "are you in the military now? that looks like camouflage."