Le Magique!

Lancome's Le Magique! Review
By Melanie Parker
Criss Angel recently told Larry King that an illusion is what you see and magic is what you feel when you see it. Well, Lancome has introduced a truly magical new polish. In a little more than five seconds, the rich, shimmering raisin hued polish transforms into a cosmic burst of color. Looking at my nails after trying this polish, it is clear that this polish is a little bit of magic in a bottle.

The polish works by saturating the nail with iron oxides within the nail lacquer that are activated by a little square magnet that slips onto the bottle of nail polish like a sleeve. There is a little tab that you rest the free edge of the wet nail on, and you hold it in place for five seconds (I waited more like 10 seconds just to make sure). I did note that if I painted 2 or 3 nails and then tried to activate the cosmic burst, it did not work because the polish had dried too much. You need to do one coat on all of your nails, and then layer the second coat on the nail and immediately activate it with the magnet before continuing on with the next nail. I imagine if you had a magnetic sketch pad stylus, you could draw a design within this polish. It works much like an Etch-a-Sketch pad gathering up all the magnetic particles on the nail's surface.

I found it easy to paint over a starburst and try again if I wasn't happy with the results. I tried just doing a thumb nail or a ring finger to see if I found a little bit of bling better, but it just looked odd. I think this looks better with all of the nails having the starburst pattern. I think it would also look great to try this as a pedicure with just the big toe featuring the pattern for Fall.

I waited 5 minutes before applying a top coat because I didn't want to disrupt the pattern. But no harm came from using a top coat on this, the smooth and shiny starbursts radiate just like star sapphire cabochons on the finger tips.

The wee .18 fl. oz bottle retails for $17. I found the base color to be similar to the long discontinued OPI Eat'n Eggplant and Goldie Creepy Groovy. It has a slightly lighter base and a lighter plum veining that shows itself in the bottle. On the nail, the magnet attracts both the darkest and the lightest pigments. Something about it reminds me of the bottom of a bowl after a chocolate-topped sundae. You know how you can take your spoon and swirl the remaining chocolate sauce around to make designs? That is what this magnet it doing to the polish. It's really fun and it will be nice to see this technique used by other manufacturers in other colors one day.

Disclosure: This product was purchased by the reviewer, Melanie Parker.