American Apparel nail polish in Mannequin

I'd heard good things about AA polish from the American blogs out there, so on a recent trip to Nottingham I thought I'd try them out. I was originally intending to buy some of their neon collection but there was no sign of that, so I settled for Mannequin.

I have read about the mannequin nail trend and quite fancied giving it a go; here are the results!

Application was good: this was 2 coats (OPI Natural Nail base coat, Mannequin, OPI Top Coat). The first coat was quite opaque although a little streaky, but fine with another layer. I didn't have any chipping and wore the polish for 4 days.

I did feel though that the colour wasn't for me. In the photo the skin around my nails looks red and a bit sore, but this wasn't the case in real life. I think this particular shade just didn't match my skin tone. I'm thinking of giving this another runout on my toes, maybe paired with some shatter polish.

My only concern with the polish is that it has separated in the bottle so I can't see it lasting very long; even vigorous shaking doesn't get the polish evenly dispersed.

So I will be keeping this for now, but I am not totally convinced.