A Gala Affair

In a recent frenzy of post-holiday nail polish procurement, I bought a number of lovelies from new-to-me manufacturers, indie and commercial alike, including the makers of this gorgeous lacquer, Mentality Nail Polish. This is Gala, part of what Mentality calls their jellychrome line, and it’s a stunner, one of those highly covetable polishes that can look like five different beauties depending on the angle of your hand and the quality of the light. Indeed quite jelly-ish in texture and multichromatic in colour, Gala is also a matte polish, which adds a sweet little hit of visual interest to this best-in-the-shade shade whose pink glass shimmer shines through as a rich, opalescent flare. Gala has a glossy sister polish of sorts in Detonate, a similarly hued polish, although Mentality calls Detonate a holographic jellychrome. Toemay-toe, toemah-toe, they’re both absolutely gorgeous. I can easily see these polishes turning into a thing, you know, in the vein of other recent must-haves like Orly’s Mirroball and L’Oreal’s Masked Affair. It’s just a matter of discovering them. I discovered mine at Harlow & Co., if you’re likewise charmed.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, here’s the 411 on Gala: Application was a breeze. Gala is a touch thick, but not unmanageably so. These photos show two coats of Gala sans topcoat, although it’s very nearly opaque in one if you’re not too particular about visible nail lines. Colour-wise, Gala swings through the opalescent spectrum, presenting as clear turquoise and periwinkle blue in the sun, to an almost purple shimmer-tinged silver in the shade. It also wore like absolute iron, and looked pretty fantastic as the base for some frosty, glittery nail art, if I may be not so humble! A really fantastic polish, and already a favourite of 2015.