NARS Night Rider nail polish review

A few months ago, I made a brand new discovery… the NARS counter! Why had no-one told me about this brand before?! All the amazing colours, powerful pigmentation and cosmetics expertise of MAC, but without the crazily made-up sales assistants – what’s not to love?

I’m blaming the fact that I was oblivious to NARS for so long on the fact that it just didn’t exist in Nottingham (back when I lived there anyway) – unsurprising given that I remember the big fuss made when we finally got our own MAC store. And as you can imagine, as soon as I knew about NARS… and knew about its nail polish… the make-up hauls began!

A beneficiary of one such shopping spree, NARS Night Rider nail polish is part of their Night Series Collection, with the lacquer shades based on some of their pre-existing eye shadow colours (ones preceded by the word ‘Night’ – see it all makes sense now!). Night Rider is a soft dusky lilac with tonnes of silver flakes of glitter and a quite unique but very pretty finish.

It has oodles of shimmer (rather than the sparkle you’d normally associate with glitter) but from other angles, has an almost foil-like finish (slightly similar to the look of Chanel’s Graphite). The glitter is not the usual micro-kind you find in every sparkly nail polish under the sun, but something a little larger, a little flatter and a whole lot denser – but without producing a spangles o’ clock effect.

The colour is also super-intriguing and rather mysterious. In some lights, it’s a dusky but delicate silvery lilac; in others, the purple is almost completely covered with brushed silver flakes that almost have a bronzy quality to them too. It is also, I might add, a dead-on match for the Night Rider eye shadow it is based on, even down to the unusual glitter particles – only the polish is a hell of a lot more pigmented!

Since this is the first NARS nail polish I’ve reviewed, I want to talk about the packaging. NARS’ packaging is of the simple black school (hi again MAC!), except that rather than being made of plastic, everything is cased in rubber. Lots of people hate this, because it goes sticky over time and seems to be a magnet for dirt in your make-up bag, but for nail polish, a rubber cap is a major bonus! The chunky square shape of NARS cap would traditionally have made things difficult for me, but the easy grip offered by the rubber meant holding and working with it was a breeze.

NARS’ brush is quite short, so easy to control, but also quite square, meaning it’s difficult to achieve a nice rounded edge by your cuticle. Formula-wise, I have no complaints; a little gloopy perhaps, but no serious issues. Although in some of my photos, it looks as if it dried bumpy, this wasn’t the case in real life, and I also found Night Rider to be extremely long wearing.

Whilst I loved the colour of Night Rider, I’m not sure if I loved it on me. Something about that pale dusky lavender seems to bring out the lobster in my hands. I actually preferred it in the shade, where that weird bronzy foil-y silvery grey-lilac effect takes flight. If they could make it look like that all the time, it’d definitely get my vote!

… And I managed to go through this whole review without making a single joke about David Hasslehoff or talking cars. Result!

Looks good with: dark colours, metallics, smoky glitters (i.e. NARS Night Series palette, go figure)
Drying time: 5-8 minutes
Coats required: 2
Chips: +5 days

NARS Night Rider, Fall 2011 Night Series Collection, $160, Lane Crawford