I wore La Boheme just a few days out of the envelope it shipped in, and filing the bottle away with her closest sisters reminded me of a polish or two I'd once hoped were lemming killers for that red, as well as just being curious as to how close all these were. Red isn't my typical jam, so the fact that I had a handful of similar things just begged a comparison for sanity's sake. Also, the sun peeked out for the first time in
days, so why not run around my neighborhood like a loon chasing those rays while fanning a handful of plastic bits?
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| indoor, CF lighting |
From left to right in all pics throughout, we have (links are to my full pics & reviews of each):
- Ninja Polish Divinity
- Baroness X Magma
- Colors by Llarowe P-47
- OPI La Boheme
First things first, absolutely none of these are dupes. They don't look identical in the bottle, merely in the same ballpark, so I'm using swatch sticks here to show subtle differences. My swatch sticks are always 2 coats with no topcoat on an off-white plastic - this means that any differences you see are 100% due to the polish itself and not due to the curve/shape/etc of my nails, but it also means that the differences are exaggerated because it's not how you'd wear the polishes. All 4 of them need three coats + topcoat to look their best. In other words, use the full mani photos to decide if one of these is worth lemming, but use the swatch sticks to see what the fine-grained differences are.
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| outdoor, afternoon sunlight |
Definitely no dupes, but definitely not how these look when built to full opacity on the nail (Magma is never pink, Divinity is nowhere near that purple). The base color on all of these is a good bit different. Divinity's purple-tinted base means that the final look is wine rather than the red of the others. Magma's light red base means that it ends up more candy-apple true red. P47 and La Boheme are indeed quite close, and are deep reds bordering on scarlet.
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| back-lit by the late afternoon sun |
Opacity is another major difference in these polishes. Magma and P47 are the sheerest jellies, Divinity borders on being a crelly, and La Boheme is a fully opaque polish somewhere between 2 and 3 coats.
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| outdoor, afternoon sunlight |
All 4 sparkle beautifully in direct sunlight, with the red part of the shift providing the classic glowing embers look at this angle. It's less obvious but just as much present in Magma - the base color here is closest to the red color of the shimmer, so it doesn't stand out as clearly. La Boheme is less glowy than the other 3, likely due to the opacity of the base muting the sparkle.
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| outdoor, angled sunlight |
The emerald shift that pops up in angled light is there in all 3, but again, much more subtly in the opaque OPI.
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| indoor, CF lighting |
The final major difference is of course availability. Ninja Polish is long gone, but the slightly more red
Starlight Polish Phoenix Feathers is a pretty solid alternative. I keep wishing that Llarowe would bring back her P-series, but alas, this one also appears to be firmly retired. Baroness X has released a couple of batches of Magma to her fan group, so getting this lovely remains in the realm of possibility. La Boheme is on ebay right now, if you're willing to pay secondary market prices. IMHO, one coat of La Boheme topped with one coat of Magma would cover any P47 wishes you had.
~Michelle
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