Friends, neighbors, relatives: I have found my new favorite cruelty-free product on the market, and it is The Body Shop’s Colour Crush Nail Polish. It’s vegan, non-toxic, cruelty-free, quick-drying, and while you can certainly use a base and top coat, it looks glossy enough to go without. I visited The Body Shop on Monday and wound up having a special Halloween manicure done by the brilliant (and blue-haired) Fleury Rose of Tomahawk Salon, which wound up being my favorite mani of…I don’t know, probably ever.
My friend Mandie and I headed to The Body Shop’s Astor Place location in New York to get our #ManicureMonday nails done, which was a lovely treat because my hands have been a little rough lately due to dropping temperatures, dehydration, and–I’ll be honest–some personal neglect.
Fortunately, Fleury was there to do the perfect bright and bold manicure for my autumn/Halloween/birthday needs!
She free-handed those bats. That’s not a sticker or a stamp. I know the shine’s glare gets in the way a bit, but they’re sharp and fantastic.
And a jack-o-lantern! Which she is also free-handed because she’s a total master. And here’s my buddy Mandie’s pretty mani, also done by Fleury:
All sorts of lovely, right? Now, back to the nail polish itself! Basically, I’m obsessed, as you can tell by the fact that I brought seven of them to work to show people.
Going cruelty-free doesn’t have to be hard (or unfashionable, as proven by these vegan leather jackets). A lot of people hear “non-toxic,” “vegan,” or “cruelty-free” and think that they might be inherently less effective or high-quality, but in reality, these products have been tested over and over–just not on animals in cages who aren’t even necessary to check the safety of a product.
Here’s one of the things I think even people who don’t necessarily value vegan products will love: these polishes are pretty effing inexpensive. They’re only $8 a piece, thus becoming a combination of quality and cheapness that makes them the easy choice.
Since trying it out, I have been wearing it nonstop. I wore a combo of it in The Body Shop Green and Hemp Over Heals to my birthday party on Saturday, where I Snapchatted the crap out of it:
While my boyfriend wasn’t very fond of the above color combo, he wound up digging the Mint Cream color. I literally was so excited about this polish that I wound up painting my nails even though I knew I was getting a manicure 12 hours later. Tada:
The above two photos were with two coats of polish and no top or base coat, so as you can tell, the colors are beautifully vivid and not streaky at all. (Of course, there is some cuticle bleed-over because I’m uncoordinated, but hopefully, you’ll all forgive me for that.) For the record, we receive and try out a ton of products at our offices, most of which never make it on the site. There are some we absolutely love and therefore recommend to our readers, but for the most part, they get buried away. The ones that we spotlight like this are ones we absolutely love.
All in all, this is my new favorite cruelty-free product on the beauty market. For any of you who are looking to snag high-quality polish in fun colors that come from a more ethical source, definitely give these a go.