NARS Night Series

A new display just appeared at my NARS counter. It features a “Night Series” palette (six of NARS’s permanently available “Night” shadows) and four (new) complementary nail polishes.

The “Night” shadows are satin/matte shadows with glitter. They’re usually black-based (as is the case with Night Clubbing, Night Porter, Night Flight, Night Breed, etc.) — but not always. The Night series palette is $55 (the standard price for this kind of six-pan palette).

Swatched dry, the palette looks kind of unexceptional. But any NARS powder shadow can be used wet or dry, so I swatched the palette again.

Night Star is matte peach “flesh” with gold sparkles (which might fly away in a dry swatch). Night Clubbing, dry, is black with tiny gold, multicolored sparkles. It’s much more intriguing wet. It becomes a really dark, sooty brown with a rainbow of gold-green-copper sparkles. Night Porter is a satin blackened green when swatched dry, but transforms into a vibrant emerald-jungle-canopy green when used wet. Night Rider is lavender with big irregular “broken glass” glitter (which doesn’t stick to the skin very well, dry). Night Flight is blue-black, another one that transforms when used wet. Night Breed is black with silver sparkles. The sparkles do stick better wet, but they’re not extremely dense either way.

The polishes are quite faithful interpretations of the eyeshadows. Night Porter is dark forest green shimmer with a few gold sparkles. It reminds me of an exotic bug, like a scarab or a bottle-green fly. Night Flight is shimmery dark sapphire blue. Night Breed is black with irregular silver sparkles. And if Night-Rider-the-eyeshadow has somewhat funky glitter, Night-Rider-the-nail-polish has, in my opinion, the best shimmer of the group. It’s lavender with dense, tiny, silver-pink-blue-multi-rainbow shimmer, which sparkles brilliantly silver, like a running stream reflecting sunlight. NARS polishes are $17 each.

The Night Series palette is available on NARScosmetics.com (which is still offering free shipping at any price). And I just heard that Neiman Marcus has the exclusive on the Night Series nail polishes until September.