Essie In The Cab-Ana vs. Essie Where's My Chauffeur Comparison Swatch Review

Eyyyy guys, it's Hump Day! It's not any particular theme of the week but I'll be honest - I can't stop playing Animal Crossing so I'm going to get this post up so I can get back to farming beetles on the island, haha. A few notes here first: I'm not sure if I made it clear, but going forward, I will be posting photos with a new natural white balance indoor lighting approach as opposed to my sterile white photos. With that said, I've got a few where I was doing both, and quite a few with the white light swatches so while I cross over, I may be burning off the back log in the meantime.

So here we go! Obviously whenever Essie comes out with a new turquoise, teal, pastel "tiffany-esque" blue, I am sold. I am a sucker! So when I saw Essie In The Cab-Ana, I just did it anyway.... But one second, don't I have something like this? Even recently from the Winter 2012 collection? Wasn't it called Essie Where's My Chauffeur? Well, let's take a look here. (With the white photos first...)



One thing that Essie has done more recently is the bottle change. I personally don't like them. I could do without the molded branded bottles, and especially the fact that they moved the name label from the top of the bottle to the bottom - Gah, not very Helmer-friendly! I like seeing all the names of my polishes from the top! Personal preference, but I don't like them.

Now how's about the actual shades? Well, see for yourself - I'll let you take a guess at which one's which:







Did you get your guesses in? Let's see if you're right:

The index and ring finger and sporting two coats of Essie In The Cab-Ana and the middle and pinky fingers have Essie Where's My Chauffeur. Did you get them right? Give yourself a pat on the back! (Oy, not that hard!) So formula wise, they both cover in two coats, however In The Cab-Ana is SUBSTANTIALLY thicker. In a not so great way. It was workable, but definitely not my preference! I know many others don't take issue with the formula but maybe I'm just being picky. I definitely prefer the smoother formula of Where's My Chauffeur.

Shade-wise, you can easily see that they come from the same family, however In The Cab-Ana is much brighter, and Where's My Chauffeur has more mint undertones and more of a dusty feel. I've seen In The Cab-Ana described as dusty, but I associate dusty with some desaturation and I think In The Cab-Ana is super vibrant. As much as I love these kinds of shades, they both definitely better suit a more fair skin tone, as you can see it sort of clashes with mine.

Here's my removal pad:



And here's the same photos from above, but in my "new and improved" white balance settings - (I like them a lot better and think I should have probably led into this post with them. Oh well.):











So as you can see, both finish in gloss quite nicely. All the swatches above do not have a top coat - it's all in the formula!

Do you have a preference in this family? If you own In The Cab-Ana, did you take issue with the formula, or is that just me being picky? (Is anyone else totally hooked on Animal Crossing: New Leaf? LOL.)