Retro Sunday Squared - Vintage Urban Decay Polishes!

Happy Sunday everyone!! Dana over at Polished Claws Up and I are back today with another edition of Retro Sunday Squared! We decided to swatch some of our vintage Urban Decay polishes for you all today. For those who know me or have been reading my blog for awhile, you know that Urban Decay is one of the brands that started my vintage polish obsession. Back in middle and high school in the 90's and early 2000's, Urban Decay was one of my favorite brands of polish.When I got back into nail polish, I set out to find myself some old bottles of UD polish. While it was quite easy to get my hands on the 2nd generation Urban Decay polishes (the silver capped ones) what I was really looking for were the older, 1st generation UD's from the original 1996 release.

Acquiring these super vintage Urban Decay polishes proved to be quite a challenge. I found it easier to seek out OPI polishes from the 80's and first generation Hard Candy polishes than to get my hands on these 1st generation Urban Decays! By chance, I found a bottle of 1st generation Dude (swatched here) on etsy and I figured that would be it for 1st generation Urban Decays. It took me almost two years to find that one and I assumed I would never find another one ever again. However, the itch to find more quickly resumed and I started turning to other bloggers to find them. I found the lovely Diane over at The Beauty Alchemist had 2 old school UD's on her blog and I contacted her and asked if she would be willing to part with them. Luckily, she was and I have swatched both of those polishes today!

When these polishes came to me, they were completely dried up. Every single 1st generation Urban Decay polish I have acquired has been dried up. This is part of the reason why I believe that hardly any 1st generation Urban Decay polishes exist today - there is a default in the design of the cap that allowed too much air in and dried up the polish inside. Back in the day when no one really knew about thinner, the solution was to just toss these polishes away. Thank goodness for the lovely people who knew better and kept their polishes despite the fact that they resembled little hockey pucks sitting in a bottle. Anyways, I took a huge bottle of my handy dandy vintage polish reviver, Seche Restore, and with some shaking and mixing, these bad boys were as good as new!

Soon after, I received four more vintage Urban Decays from the awesome Jet over at Idee Fixe and my first generation UD polish collection now has a grand total of seven! I am pretty happy with my little collection, considering I never thought I would own even one of them! With a lot of thinner and a little bit of patience, all seven polishes have been brought back to life and are ready for polishing! I will show you the polishes from Jet soon but today I have for you Urban Decay Shelter and Stray Dog from the 1997 Urban Animal Collection.

So I hope you guys enjoy these first generation Urban Decay polishes I have for you today! Don't forget to check out Dana's post over at Polished Claws Up! today. She has some second generation Urban Decay polishes for you all. Note the different in the bottle shapes and the logos! 

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One quick note - I have nubbed my nails. Not really a big deal but I just wanted to warn you all. I have gone without a break on my swatching hand since July and I'm sure I could have gone for much longer, I was just getting sick of having long nails. To be honest, I'm not really a fan of having long nails but my nail beds are all different lengths so it bothers me to have short nails. I keep my nails long so that they can all be a uniform length. But this week I said TO HECK WITH IT and chopped those babies off. Let me tell you, I am really digging having nubs again. I may keep them this way for quite a while. Yeah, they're all uneven and look kind of weird but I love them. Sorry long nail fans, these nubs are here to stay!

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Anyways, first up today is Urban Decay Shelter. Shelter is from the 1997 Urban Animal Collection, which Urban Decay created in collaboration with designer Todd Oldham to benefit animal welfare. If you are familiar with the Urban Decay brand, you know that animal welfare is always something they have advocated which is one of the many reasons I love UD. Shelter is an AMAZING green glass fleck polish that is so packed with glass flecks that it is almost metallic. LOVE IT! The formula was fantastic even as old as this polish is.


Here's 3 coats of Urban Decay Shelter. Enjoy!

 

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Next up is Urban Decay Stray Dog, also from the 1997 Urban Animal collection. Stray Dog is probably one of the most unique and amazing polishes in my entire stash. It has a gunmetal grey-taupe base, and it is packed with red and green shimmer. When I first saw this polish, I figured it was just a grey with green flash but it is so much more than that. Never have I seen shimmer like this in a polish before. The green and red color of the shimmer almost make this polish Christmas-y! It is absolutely amazing! I had a tough time capturing the shimmer in pictures, so you may have to enlarge the pics to see what I'm talking about. The formula on this one was a bit tricky, but the reason why I had a bit of trouble with this one wasn't because of the formula but because of the brush. It was extremely misshapen and just terrible. Oh well, I still managed to get this on without any major problems.

Here's 2 coats of Urban Decay Stray Dog. Don't forget to enlarge these pics to check out the phenomenal red and green shimmer in this puppy!

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What do you guys think? Do you have any 1st generation Urban Decay polishes? Any 2nd generation Urban Decay polishes?

Thanks for stopping by today everyone! I know I have been in and out lately as I have been extremely busy these past few weeks so thanks for sticking around. Love you guys!