Zoya Codie

I've ordered rather a lot of Zoyas over the past several months. They just kept having sales or promos that appealed to me (BOGO and free ship? SOLD).

One Zoya that I've hemmed and hawed over for months and finally bought is Codie, which is described on the Zoya site as a "blackened espresso brown creme with subtle olive undertones." Now, I must confess: I normally steer clear of brown polish. As in...I never buy it. Ever. It's the one category of color that just doesn't do it for me at all. I've owned exactly two brown polishes - Essie Little Brown Dress, because it came in a set with three other colors, and Dr.'s REMEDY Desire Dark Brown, which was sent to me for review. I virtually never reach for them (and in fact I think I may have passed Desire Dark Brown on to someone else).

But Codie intrigued me, with those "subtle olive undertones." So, I finally pulled the trigger. Can't beat half price, after all!

There was a little bit of drama with Codie. I opened my bottle to do a manicure last week and found...a mess. The polish was stringy like whoa. These fine, wispy hairs of polish would float all over the place when I pulled the brush out of the bottle. Huge clumps of polish were clinging to the brush and brush stem. It was just...really bad. Ordinarily if a polish is slightly thick I just suck it up and get out my trusty Seche Restore but this seemed very far gone. Happily, when I wrote the company they responded quickly. After sending a picture of the compromised bottle Zoya sent out a replacement right away.

So here I am with my new, formulaically perfect bottle of Codie and what can I say? I really quite like it. It's dark and chic without screaming BROWN or BLACK. Must be those olive undertones. Perhaps you can get a better sense of them here:

There's a certain murky quality to it that I really like.

The formula for Codie was great. A bit thin, maybe even watery on the first coat but the second coat makes it perfection. I've been so impressed with Zoya's formula in the last several collections, particularly their cremes. Wonderful and opaque, even self-leveling in some cases (this is a quality I prize above almost all others in nail polish).

I bought this on Zoya.com. The price is $8 but I used a promotion code and got it for half price. Whee! Codie was part of the fall 2011 Smoke & Mirrors collection.

Zoya Codie