As you may know, I love buying secondhand nail polish. It offers me the chance to buy older nail polishes that are discontinued, buy more for less money, and find polishes I’ve wanted for years without any luck (looking at you, indie polishes!). Recently, I bought someone’s collection of regular nail polish on 2dehands, a national online marketplace. In it, I found a bottle of Essie Muchi Muchi, a cool-toned pink colour. Immediately, I raised my eyebrows. Didn’t I already have this polish? And didn’t it… look different? I picked my own bottle from its cabinet, and quickly saw it’s indeed a different colour. Same name, number, and polish name, but… different?
The Old Bottle
I bought this nail polish myself, at a Dutch store (DA in Groningen). As far as my memory goes, this polish looks exactly the same as it did when I bought it. It’s a very pale pink colour, slightly sheer, but still tinted enough. This is three coats over a base coat, without a topcoat on top.
According to Checkfresh, a website where you can check the production dates of cosmetics, this bottle belongs to a batch that was made in November 2017. Considering I studied until 2017, this isn’t much off.
Some more photos of the old bottle. I really do like the pale colour of this polish, as it goes well with my skintone. It’s almost a “my nails but better” colour. The milkiness is something that attracts me to wear this polish.
The New Bottle
Onto the new bottle, then! As you can see, it’s MUCH darker! This is definitely as cool-toned as the old bottle, yet more of a darker light pink instead of a pale one. It’s as sheer as the former one, but simply differently pigmented.
According to the same website, this batch was produced in April 2022. I received this polish last year, so that would be possible.
This polish is much darker, but equally as gorgeous. Pink is definitely one of my favourite nail polish colours (blame my cool skin undertone!), and this one is totally up my alley.
Comparison
Here’s a photo of them both on my nails. On my index and ring finger the old bottle, and on my middle finger and pinkie the newer one. The difference is stark!
Anouk, a fellow Dutch nail polish blogger, mentioned the same issue in her post; two of her bottles also have different colours to them. She mentioned she believes it to be due to a fading pigment. This is most definitely the culprit, and might have been accelerated due to improper storage. In my case, the old bottle was always stored in a Helmer, away from heat and direct sunlight. Temperatures were always between 14 and 25 (on a particularly hot day). I also remember picking the colour because of its paleness, and the neck of the bottle doesn’t show any discolouration at all (which can happen when polishes change colour overtime due to pigments losing colour).
So I guess there is one explanation: the nail polish changed colour before I bought it already. Considering the darker colour is the original one, it is highly possible that Essie used a pigment that fades over time. I know purples and pinks do this more often. It’s a shame, but it doesn’t affect the formula whatsoever, just the colour itself. And honestly? I think the paler pink is much(i) more unique.
