Starlight Polish Phoenix Feathers is utterly gorgeous... and from the first glance absolutely begged for a comparison to the impossible-to-find Ninja Polish Divinity. Older discontinued Clarins 230-type polishes are going for staggeringly high prices now, and I honestly haven't seen any of Ninja's 230 offerings sold anywhere lately, so this offers a shot at a real fave for a lot of people that missed it. Additionally, while
I love Divinity, the formula has been tragically chippy both times I've worn it, so a wear test was a required part of my comparison. When I first put Phoenix Feathers on this week, Divinity went on the ring finger of my right hand, and has been there the whole time. I ended up taking so many pics of the comparison in-progress that it needed to be its own separate post.
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| indoor, bright CF lighting |
A round bottle of course gives Divinity a more shifty appearance as compared to Phoenix Feathers' square one, but nope, there's still those glints of green and blue in the corners. In comparing the two colors, the bottle shot gives away the spoiler here - the base color is not identical, meaning that Phoenix Feathers isn't a true 100% samesies dupe of Divinity. But I still have this post tagged as a dupe because in most cases, I genuinely don't think the difference matters.
Again, for all swatch pics below, Divinity is on my ring finger while the rest are all Phoenix Feathers.
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| one coat, no topcoat or cleanup. |
At one coat, the difference in the 2 polishes is small but there. Divinity has the better formula, covering more evenly and opaquely, and gliding across the nail more smoothly.
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| two coats |
But by 2 coats, the differences in formulae are pretty well evened out. Divinity really only needs 3 coats to be wearable versus Phoenix Feathers' required 4, but I went ahead and did 4 for both polishes. Divinity dries maybe a touch more glossy, but both dry down just a touch satin and really do need topcoat to maximize the shine and let the shimmer sparkle.
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| indoor, CF lighting |
At 4 coats + topcoat, in most lighting, there's absolutely no difference visually in these 2 polishes. Both of them hit that lovely emerald shift at the same time and to about the same degree.
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| outdoor, bright direct sunlight |
In shade, typical office light, and anything but super bright sunlight, they're the same. People at my office could not identify at all which nail was a different polish.
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| UNF DAT SHIMMER SHIFT. |
The only time the difference was
obvious was when i held my hand up so that bright sunlight shone through the free ends of my nails - then the more cool blue-purple base color of Divinity was easily differentiated from the warmer red-purple of Phoenix Feathers.
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| Divinity on the right, Phoenix Feathers on the left 2 nails |
In bright, direct sunlight, the differences in the base translated to a slightly different overall look, with Divinity being just a touch cooler and more berry-toned.
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| outdoor, bright direct sunlight |
Final verdict: if you don't have Divinity, Phoenix Feathers is a fantastic alternative, and should be enough to lay all but the most die-hard lemmings to rest. I'm pretty sure if your first coat was of a purple jelly (Baroness X Doomjelly comes immediately to mind), 2 coats of Phoenix Feathers would then be dead-on for Divinity.
Oddly enough re: wear testing, both wore great. I was steel-wool-ing the crap out of some cooking pots this week, and my right hand here is my dominant one, so that should have trashed the hell out of a notoriously chippy polish... but nope, both passed with flying colors. Huh. Several things could be contributing here: I let the first and second coats dry almost completely just due to the time it took to get the pictures comparing these 2 polishes at 1 and 2 coats. I usually wear Divinity at 2-3 coats, but there's 4 here. And finally, since I wasn't stamping, I used
my cheap-o Pro-FX topcoat. In any case, there were no differences in wear time for these polishes, either.
Good luck slaying lemmings!
~Michelle
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