Friday, October 5, 2012

OPI Absolutely Alice vs BYS Through the Looking Glass

One of the nail polishes I was able to pick up in my little haul the other day was OPI Absolutely Alice.

This polish was released in 2010 to coincide with the Alice in Wonderland movie, and included some amazing glitter polishes that were completely different from the usual OPI reds and pinks. Unfortunately, as all good collections are, it was discontinued, and now Absolutely Alice and Mad as a Hatter remain elusive lemmings for many.

So when I came across this polish by BYS, a cheap Australian brand, I did a double take:
"What is this?? Absolutely Alice in a BYS bottle??!" I thought to myself. Almost. It's called Through the Looking Glass, and is also (obviously) Alice in Wonderland themed, and contains predominantly blue glitters with a sprinkling of gold. I immediately sent one of my friends out to her local Gloss store (unfortunately there were no BYS stockists near me) to grab it for me, as well as one of the others in the collection. I didn't have Absolutely Alice at the time, and it was beautiful and close enough to cure my lemming.

But then of course I ended up finding AA and of course now I have to do a comparison, so here goes:

Both AA and TtLG are bright blue glitter polishes in a clear base, with some gold glitter. They are insanely, eye-blindingly sparkly in sunlight. The main difference is that the glitters in AA are much finer and denser. It is completely opaque in 3 coats, whereas TtLG is not. (Please excuse my wonky right hand finger. This is why I do all my swatches on my left hand.)




As you can see, TtLG is still quite see through. Here is 3 coats of Absolutely Alice:




Pic heavy, so please click "Read More" to keep reading!



And here is 3 coats of Through the Looking Glass:




Here is a direct comparison, 3 coats of each over OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui (sorry about the terrible state of my skin - after using all that acetone to remove the glitter my skin was destroyed!):






So as you can see, the colours are virtually identical, and over blue undies you can barely see a difference. Formula-wise, AA was much smoother and easier to apply. TtLG was thick and gloopy, but manageable. For the price difference ($20-$30 for AA vs $6 for TtLG), I would be satisfied with the BYS dupe.

OPI Absolutely Alice is discontinued and only available on ebay or blog sales (or you might get lucky and stumble across one like I did). I have a few available in my blog sale at the moment.

BYS polishes are usually available at Kmart and Gloss stores, but I've never seen the Wonderland collection at Kmart, so I'm assuming at this stage they are only available at Gloss. They are priced at $5.95, and there are 3 in the collection.

What do you think - reasonable dupe or not? Which do you prefer? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading! :)

6 comments:

  1. I actually prefer the dupe! Sad I'm not an Aussie :(

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    1. I think the gold comes through a little more in the dupe. We have some awesome polishes over here but TBH you guys in the US have way more that we can't get!

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  2. I kind of like the bigger sparkles in the dupe, when it's over an undercoat. They're beautiful!

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    Replies
    1. The sparkles in both of them are crazy eye-searing in the sun! So distracting when driving :p

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  3. Oooh now I need to try my AA! :D

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    Replies
    1. It's seriously pretty, but the glitter makes it such a pain to remove, so I avoid it. It's such a shame because it deserves to be worn!

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