Cuccio Colour Professional Nail Lacquer

I received my full-sized bottle of Cuccio Colour Professional Nail Lacquer in my December 2013 Topbox. Until then, I’d never heard of this brand, which I now know is from California and doesn’t test on animals.

Cuccio sells a variety of spa and nail-related products, including some cool-sounding collections (“Alternative Energy LED Neon Collection”). But the colour I received, Red Eye to Shanghai, is from the company’s Colour collection, which is more on the traditional side of nail colours.

As the name suggests, this colour is red. Cuccio describes it as a “dark red with a blue base, opaque.” It’s a rich colour and one that I think some people would love. However, I am not one of them. For reasons I can’t explain, I just don’t like red on my fingernails. So I used this lacquer, which contains no DBP or toluene, on my toes.

According to Cuccio, this lacquer will provide, “rich coverage in one coat and true coverage in two coats.” Other than that, Cuccio doesn’t make any claims about this specific product, which surprises me because this polish has some great qualities about it.

For starters, it goes on evenly, smoothly and with excellent coverage. One coat does indeed deliver rich colour while a second coat intensifies it, leaving me with a colour that’s identical to what’s in the bottle. That colour is also vivid, glossy and very much a classic shade of red nail polish.

The lacquer also dried fairly quickly and, because I only needed two coats, it dried all the way through. The results looked great and at first I thought I’d discovered a great new polish.

But then, after only four days, I discovered that the lacquer had either chipped or cracked on multiple nails. If this had happened on my fingers, that would be one thing, but this was on my toes. Normally I can get at least a week out of toenail polish and usually it’s longer. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with Red Eye to Shanghai.

Perhaps though it’s for the best that I’m not loving this lacquer because I can’t figure out where to buy it from, or even what I would pay for it. The company’s official site only sells to salons and nail professionals, while all the usual consumer sites don’t seem to carry this brand. Maybe you can only get it in a salon? If so, it’s an odd product to include in a beauty box.

Would I buy this product: No.

Should you buy this product: Some people change their polish quite frequently so they don’t care if their colour only lasts a few days. If you’re one of those people, you might enjoy this brand, if you can track it down.