It’s been a while since I posted – but this is the perfect polish to break the rut… Chanel Graphite.
Oh, Le Vernis Graphite… j’adore.
After using Graphite, my first Chanel polish, I was completed consumed by the desire to buy as many of their lacquers as possible, without care for cost or availability or anything else similarly level-headed – THAT is how good it was. However effusive I am in the rest of this review, trust me, it isn’t enough!
Graphite is just amazing. I’ve seen lots of posts that make it look like a charcoal silver, which it most definitely isn’t. Instead, it’s a gorgeous glittering green gold, burnished blackened and utterly brilliant. In some lights, it flashes a shimmering silvery khaki but this dirty dazzling delicious fool’s gold is by far the more dominant colour. It’s simply a joy to behold and I make abslutely no apologies for the abundance of photos that follows as a result!
The other amazing aspect of Graphite is its finish. It’s a cross between a foil and a glitter but is obviously neither and yet more than both put together. It looks amazingly textured but is totally smooth to the touch. It’s Extra Special in a way that words that also name an expensive supermarket ready-meal just cannot do justice to. In my collection, it’s also utterly breathtakingly unique.
I was also blown away by the pure quality of it. I felt I didn’t need to do anything. It just flowed perfectly from the bottle to the brush and onto my fingernails in a neat perfect shape. I always hear the term on polish blogs ‘applied like butter’ and have never really had cause to use it – but this stuff really seemed to melt like magic onto my talons.
For those not familiar with Chanel nail polishes, the chunky square cap lifts off to reveal a small round screw cap that allows better grip for application. The brush itself is slightly short but medium-sized in thickness and I encountered no problems with it whatsoever. However, by this stage, I was in such a state of general giddiness that the brush could have been starfish-shaped for all I’d have known – I just could not stop staring at my nails!
If you look up images of graphite itself, it’s amazing to see how Chanel have managed to transform the mineral’s exact qualities and shading to a polish. It also reminded me of another mineral – pyrite, also known as fool’s gold – and the colour is just this wonderful textured mixture of gold, silver, green, charcoal and black, with shadows and shimmers in all the right places. It’s gorgeous from up-close, it’s gorgeous from far away… I imagine it would almost be gorgeous with your eyes shut too!
It’s so glittery, it pretty much glows in the dark but despite it’s glitz factor, it absolutely never feels obtrusive, ostentatious or OTT. It also reminded me of a shimmering sheath of snakeskin – slinky, glitzy, totally divinely luxe.
Wonderful colour, fabulous quality, a sense of sophistication, a luxurious glamour that’s still tasteful… It’s basically everything I ever hoped and expected from Chanel but had been afraid to believe was true. Well, it all was!
Looks good with: black, sophistication, The Look
Drying time: <5 mins
Coats required: 1-2
Chips: 2-3 days
Shimmering in the shade!
Chanel Le Vernis Graphite, Fall 2011 Illusion D’Ombres Collection, $180, Chanel
Through The Looking Glass 