Chanel Le Vernis Nail Polish Colour 119 MUSE (discontinued) review/ swatch

Chanel Le Vernis Nail Colour in shade number 119 Muse was definitely from a very old collection (based on the color code- you will notice most recent collections are codes 300s to 400s or 500s).  It's long discontinued.

In the bottle it looks like a palish french nude color that is more on a beige/cream side (not dirty beige or nude beige but more offwhite beige cream, there's either little or virtually no pink base in this. It is definitely on the sheer side for a nude shade, and more transparent finish compared to other recent whitish shades like Blanc Petale or Blanc Ceramic etc.  

Here is just 1 coat. You can see it's literally transparent besides some sparse shimmers.

Two coats in all pictures below:

You can see it's still rather sheer compared to the color in the bottle. In the bottle I'm holding you can see visible little flicks of very fine silvery shimmers. On the nails the shimmers still show through, but they are somewhat sparsely distributed and no matter how many coats you do it will still be really subtle. I had a series of formal work meetings this week so I needed a really conservative "my nails but cleaner" looking shades and this clearly fits the description.

Different lighting which captures more opacity and shimmer. You do get some minimal coverage over the nails like a sheer whitish french shade (apologies for the uneven side, that was seche vite top coat that overrun on the side).

In sunlight and yellow lights I can see there are even some finer pinkish shimmers in this, but in most other lights and indoors it always just looks like a sparse silvery flecks of shimmer in a offwhite creme sheer finish.

I applied 2 coats and decided to top, because I think even with 3 coats it will still be sheer. However it has a glossy smooth finish and it really looks like a very clean and polished shade.

Overall 4/5 when evaluated as a basic nude if you do not consider the Chanel price tag and how rare this shade might be now (i.e. if it floats around ebay you would be looking at like $50+ to $90+ easily). I've personally never really paid much above retail for any of my personal polish collection.  In my own opinion, I do not think this is anywhere near one of those rare Chanel polishes that people would pay astronomical amounts over, nor is it worth it. It's a very nice basic french shade with cute flecks of silver shimmers (that may disappoint a lot of people since it is sparse).

You can easily achieve the same look with layering any of the Chanel tokyo happenings shades from 2009 (they were all quite translucent , e.g. #397 Lune D'Argent  and #417 Galactic touch ) over a standard offwhite creme shade of polish.