Essie Resort 2017: Strike A Pose-Itano Comparisons

Hi guys!

Today I have swatches and comparisons of the newest mint green to join the Essie family, Strike a Pose-Itano. I always look forward to the Resort collection and this year was no exception. I have to thank my buddy Lauren for sending me the entire collection as a baby shower gift last month. If you are an Essie lover but are not familiar with Lauren's Instagram account or blog I highly recommend you check them out! Not only does she redefine #nailgoals, but she regularly partners with the Essie Canada team and is a great source for swatches and reviews of upcoming collections. And although I plan to feature just one shade from the collection today, I also plan to cover all four polishes in an upcoming review. I just have one more polish left to try before I can do so. But anyway, back to the task at hand!

Essie: Strike A Pose-Itano

Resort Collection 2017: Ciao Effect, Strike A Pose-Itano, Sorrento Yourself, Resort Romanza

I feel like mint green polishes have been on trend for so long now and yet they seem to show no sign of slowing down in popularity. I have a particular weakness for mint, so as soon as I saw Strike A Pose-Itano I was very eager to get it on my nails. I was also very curious to see how it would stack up next to other mint greens in the Essie family, so I decided some comparisons were in order! Plus, now that I'm on maternity leave I have a little extra time on my hands (for now!). 

The first two polishes in my collection that came to mind to use for comparison's sake were Mint Candy Apple and Blossom Dandy. I have the green-toned MCA, for reference, and there was some discussion that SAP might be close to the blue-toned version (which I used to own), so I was also eager to look into that. And then when my friend Kindra and I were discussing SAP it came up that it might have a dusty grey tone to it like Udon Know Me from the last Fall collection, so I decided to pull that one out as well. 

L-R: Blossom Dandy, Strike A Pose-Itano, Mint Candy Apple

L-R: Mint Candy Apple, Strike A Pose-Itano, Udon Know Me

From looking at the first bottle shot we can see the first three look PRETTY similar. When we add Udon Know Me into the mix you can see the slightly more blue tone being pulled out in SAP (or should I say slightly less green?), but unfortunately it's not the robin's egg blue that the blue-toned MCA is/was. If you are interested in reading more on that subject here is a link to a previous post I wrote where the case of the two MCAs is discussed. But for quick reference please see the images below. 

And now we get into the good stuff... the swatch comparisons. After getting these on my nails, SAP and Blossom Dandy appear to be very nearly dupes, where MCA definitely pulls more green and Udon Know Me is distinctly darker and more grey (I felt that this one looked even darker on the nail than it did in the bottle. I had never swatched it before and let me just say, I LOVE it and can't wait to do a full manicure with it). I keep looking at SAP and Blossom Dandy together and I almost can't tell a difference. There's just the slightest bit more dustiness and less green to SAP, but it's fairly negligible. I'm quite surprised at how close the two are, I was not expecting that. Formula-wise I found the formula on SAP to be a tiny bit thick and out of all four polishes I struggled the most with it, though once I top coated everything self-leveled pretty nicely. The one with the best formula was Udon Know Me, hands down. 

L-R: Udon Know Me, Strike A Pose-Itano, Blossom Dandy, Mint Candy Apple

My final thoughts on these polishes are that if you already own Blossom Dandy you probably don't need Strike A Pose-Itano, unless of course you are an Essie collector. And if you're now trying to decide between buying Blossom Dandy or SAP I'd personally say to go with Blossom Dandy, only because it has a better formula, in my opinion. A lot of people are still struggling to find this collection in stores, but when I last checked target.com they had all four shades in stock to ship. I'm not sure if that's still the case, but it's worth checking out if you are in the U.S. 

I hope you found this post useful, stay tuned for my review of the entire 2017 Resort Collection, coming soon! If you follow me on Instagram you already know that I've fallen head over heels for one of the shades!

Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you guys again soon! XOXO.