Yves Saint Laurent Manicure Couture Colour Nail Polish Duo - Edition 7

I saw these cool new nail polish duos by Yves Saint Laurent the other day at Bloomingdale's. You get two mini nail polishes that are a pretty good size for $30; they aren't as small as OPI or Sephora by OPI minis. And there are two duos to choose from: Edition 7 (mint green and chocolate brown), and Edition 8 (bubble gum pink and tangerine orange). Honestly, I am SO sick of the stereotypical flamingo pinks and Sunkist oranges we're dished out every spring and summer (it's just so predictable, and at this point I'm always wondering, "haven't I seen this exact color a million times by now?" when I lay my eyes on them). Going home with Edition 7 was a no-brainer.

The mint green is a vibrant medium mint with lime green microshimmer, and I think it definately has the look of a Chanel nail polish (it's all in the subtle shimmer). If you love greens, you will probably buy this duo just for this shade:

The chocolate brown is a neutral-cool chocolately creme. It almost appears to have a tinge of purple from time to time, depending on the lighting, but mostly it just looks like hot fudge sauce (YUM):

I found the formula on these to be a bit streaky, but it wasn't too bad. I did three coats for both pictures, although you could get away with two (however, the green looks even better with three ;). I really didn't like the brush, and I think the streakiness I experienced was due to that rather than the formula. It's a shorter brush with a sharp diagonal cut, and I found that even though it did spread out evenly when you applied pressure, the shape of it goes against the natural shape of the cuticle:

It's a bit of an uphill battle. I found this to be especially true with the brown shade, which not only had a sharper angle than the brush in the mint green bottle, but the bristles were uneven (....um....hello, quality control!). If you look closely, you can see in the pictures that the green shade is so nice and smooth around the cuticle, while the brown shade looks a bit messier. All in all, however, this is a very nice (and more importantly, unexpected!) item for spring 2012.