Vintage rarity: China Glaze Open Sky

Though I almost never show it, I have a pretty sizable collection of vintage China Glaze. I have a Helmer drawer full of the really old bottles with the ridged cap (like the one you'll see today), and about 3/4 of a drawer filled with pre-2006 white labels. And let me tell you, some of my favorite polishes of all time come from the first 10 years of China Glaze. Off the top of my head... Draped in Velvet, Anklets of Amethyst, Dorothy Who?, Cat's Eye, Crystal Ball, and so many more. I wouldn't say that this one quite makes the all-star list, but it's still a fun little polish and a time capsule of the time it was released!

Not a whole lot is known about the history of China Glaze. The brand reportedly started in 1998 and has been chugging along ever since then, but aside from that and its acquisition by American International Industries in 2005, there's not much info out there. All I can say about this specific polish is that it was released sometime between 1998-2002, seeing as this style of bottle was used during that approximate timeframe. (There was also an earlier bottle, which may have been a prototype or available to professionals only, that has not been documented anywhere online aside from the vintage polish Facebook group... I have 2 of these, so maybe I should post about them!)

Open Sky is, as the name suggests, a sky blue frost. It's a little less vibrant IRL... it's more slate blue than the robin's egg shown in this picture. It's veering into metallic/chrome territory with how silvery it is! When was the last time a polish brand put out a color like this? Hell, when was the last time this was considered fashionable or trendy? Of course, I care very little about what's in style, so I love this. I imagine that the average consumer, though, would not appreciate its brushstrokey finish. This is one of those polishes that has no forgiveness, no wiggle room, no margin for error. It will show every single lump, bump, and slip of the brush! I've been trained well with all the streaky frosty goodness I've encountered in my time, but if someone who can barely get a creme polish on their nails without it looking like a trainwreck were to try this, I don't even want to imagine how this would go down!

At the end of the day... I like this polish. A lot. Enough that I own two bottles of it (though I picked up this vintage specimen mostly for collecting purposes). Even with all of its flaws (...its many, many flaws), I look down on my nails with delight. It's just another one of those times where I'm reminded how much I truly love vintage nail polish. There are so many funky colors and finishes that you just don't see today... either because they've fallen out of fashion, or because the methods of their production have been lost to the sands of time (for example, the ChG Babes in Toeland foil-glass fleck finish apparently cannot be reproduced with modern ingredients). Yes, we now have the luxury of holo and multichrome and flakies and all that good stuff, but I'll take a hideously colored toluene-formaldehyde stink bomb over a modern indie polish any day of the week. :-)

And until next time... PEACE! xoxo