Let’s begin with the obvious.
“Misty Morning” would be an excellent stripper name.
I don’t make the rules.
I can already see her. Misty Morning works Tuesday through Saturday at a club called The Velvet Peach, wears a rhinestone thong, has a tiny dog named Chanel, and absolutely does not answer questions about her real name.
But enough about Misty Morning the hypothetical stripper.
Today we’re talking about Misty Morning the Deborah Lippmann nail polish, and unfortunately, the stripper has considerably more staying power.
The Color
Misty Morning is a grey-blue, which means the name is actually pretty damn appropriate.
It has that chilly, slightly melancholy quality of an overcast morning when you look out the window and realize it’s raining and you have to go to work anyway.
It’s pretty.
It’s sophisticated.
It’s understated.
It is also apparently possessed.
The Application
Oh, good Lord.
This polish is streaky.
Not “needs a second coat” streaky.
Not “be a little careful with your brush” streaky.
I’m talking “Did I accidentally paint my nails with a blue-gray highlighter?” streaky.
I applied coat after coat after coat in an increasingly desperate attempt to make my nails look like they had been painted intentionally.
At some point I stopped counting because numbers had lost all meaning.
I was just sitting there, painting on another layer and thinking:
Surely this is enough.
It was not enough.
Another coat.
Still streaky.
Another coat.
Still streaky.
At this point, I had applied such an unholy amount of nail polish that my nails were basically wearing tiny grey-blue sweaters.
And somehow, the finish still wasn’t even.
The Drying Situation
But perhaps all those coats would have been worth it if the polish had actually dried.
Spoiler alert:
It did not.
Misty Morning seemed to enter a fascinating new state of matter somewhere between liquid and solid.
It didn’t dry so much as it developed a Play-Doh-like consistency.
You know when you’re a kid and you’re playing with Play-Doh and it gets warm and soft and vaguely sticky?
That’s what my nails felt like.
I could practically imagine leaving fingerprints in them.
Hours later, I was still dealing with polish that apparently had no intention of becoming a functional manicure.
At this point I had to ask myself:
What exactly are we doing here, Deborah?
The Staying Power
Now, you’d think a polish that requires approximately seventeen coats and takes about three business days to dry would at least have the decency to stick around.
Nope.
It all came off within 24 hours.
Twenty-four.
Hours.
All that effort. All those coats. All that Play-Doh.
Gone.
Misty Morning apparently woke up the next day, looked at my nails, and said:
You know what? I’m done.
And honestly?
Good.
The Verdict
Look, I love a pretty nail polish.
I am willing to forgive a lot for a beautiful color. A slightly annoying formula? Fine. A little extra drying time? I can cope. A polish that needs two or three coats? We’re still friends.
But an aggressively streaky formula that requires an unreasonable number of coats, refuses to dry, achieves the consistency of children’s modeling clay, and then falls off within 24 hours?
Absolutely not.
The color is lovely.
The name is fabulous.
The stripper has more staying power.
The Unvarnished Truth: Misty Morning is a pretty color trapped inside a truly terrible manicure experience.
Rating: 1/5
Pretty? Yes.
Easy to apply? Absolutely fucking not.
Will it dry? Eventually, perhaps, sometime after the heat death of the universe.
Will it stay on your nails? Apparently not.
Would I buy it again? Misty and I have seen enough of each other.
