*Exact* Dupes: Zoya Yummy and OPI Just Groovy

April 23, 2008

*Exact* Dupes: Zoya Yummy and OPI Just Groovy

My biggest nail polish pet peeve is accidentally buying a color that is similar to another color I already have. I can’t even say that these colors are similar. They are EXACT DUPLICATES of each other.

My initial reaction was frustration. I was warned by the ladies at MUA that these were close to each other but I didn’t listen. I just didn’t think they would be this close. For several reasons, my next thought was to swap the Zoya and keep the OPI. One reason being that I passionately hate Zoya. My hatred began the day I hauled from Zoya. I bought 8 or so colors. Of those, Zoya Suvi and Kotori from the Downtown Collection, I hated so much I had to swap them. Both colors took 4 coats and they looked cheap with my skin tone. The other color was Zoya Stephanie, as my namesake, I felt I had to buy it. I love the color. It’s a very light pink, almost white but it too took four coats to be even and opaque. It was an ungodly streak-fest to apply. After that disappointment I put myself on a Zoya no-buy and constantly preach the anti-Zoya gospel to anyone who will listen. The running joke on MUA is that Zoya killed my family and I became Catwoman. (Polish fumes kill brain cells. : D)

OPI, on the other hand, is my love. I mean really, OPI is my bread and butter. I spend my nights and days dreaming little OPI dreams – jonesing for the next collection, scouring the depths of the internet nail polish underworld and hole-in-the-wall beauty shops for coveted discontinueds. (Just Groovy was recently discontinued, more reason to keep it.) At least that’s how I felt until recently. Lately, OPI has been dropping the ball. Since OPI changed their formula to big 3 free, quality has been all over the place. The India collection is bleh, same colors – different names, nothing new or exciting.

But still my loyalty is with OPI so I thought for sure I would be keeping Just Groovy, no contest…

then I did the swatches. Wow, was I surprised. These swatches are without basecoat and topcoat. Both polishes were streaky, Zoya slightly less so. Both needed 3 coats to even out. OPI was really chalky, really tough to apply. I also prefer Zoya’s brush to OPI’s pro-wide. The finish on Yummy was a little more glossy than Just Groovy. Both polishes separate easily in the bottle. There is a very very slight difference in color – but it’s not in any way noticeable even to the MUA nail-board eye.

What now?… I’ve heard horror stories about Zoya’s wear, like chips within hours of application (I don’t know first hand because I always end up removing Zoyas almost immediately) but I had a really tough time with Just Groovy’s application.

So I decided to wear Yummy on my left hand and Just Groovy on my right hand to see what’s what. For the actual mani, I used Barielle Camo as the base which completely fixed Yummy’s streakiness but seemed to actually make Just Groovy *more* streaky. Seche Vite fixed the unevenness that I got with both colors after applying 3 coats. I’ll post in a few days with the results.

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