Orly Color Pass Fall 2020 – Desert Muse

I can’t believe it’s time for fall collections already! I’m not quite ready for summer to be over yet but since I received this Orly collection through my Color Pass subscription I wanted to get it swatched for those of you who are ready for fall collections. We had some wild weather in Connecticut so I don’t have my outdoor shots for these polishes.

Full disclosure, I generally don’t like fall collections. The colors don’t usually do much for me. If I like polishes in a fall collection, it’s usually only like the greys, teals or things that would be good for Halloween manicures. To be honest, when I opened the box for this and saw they were all cremes I wasn’t pumped. However, the colors weren’t like anything in my collection (both in color and finish) so I was intrigued. Once I started swatching I was excited because I was actually really liking them.

With the exception of 2 colors, these all had fantastic formulas. The two that don’t have fantastic formulas still had good formulas, if that makes sense. No real application issues to report for any of these. For all of my photos, I did 2 coats. These all dried down glossy so my photos are without top coat.

Canyon Clay

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Canyon Clay is described as a russet brown creme. I found this was just a touch cooler in tone in the bottle then how it appears on me. I did some color correcting in the second photo to show how it looks in the bottle. The formula for this was a bit thin for my taste. This will flood your cuticle area and side walls if you do too thick of a coat. However, it wasn’t hard to work with and still only needed 2 coats so I still really liked this one.

Midnight Oasis

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Midnight Oasis is described as a dark grey blue creme. This had a fantastic formula that was perfectly opaque in 2 coats. It applies very smooth and evenly. This is one of the fall colors I mentioned that I would usually like.

Red Rock

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Red Rock is described as a red burgundy creme. I’d call it more of a brick red. It had a fantastic formula and was very easy to apply. My photos show it in 2 coats.

Roam With Me

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Roam With Me is described as a rose nude creme. This is a shade that I would have hated a few years ago. As it turns out I really like how colors like this look on me! Like the other polishes in this collection, it self-leveled perfectly and had great coverage in 2 coats.

Sagebrush

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Sagebrush is described as a dark sage creme. I had to change the warmth in my photos to better show the green tint this has. It was pulling very greyish blue on me instead of greyish green. This had a great formula and I think it would be a good candidate for applying in 1 thick coat to be opaque in 1.

The photos below are the edited versions to show what this color looked like in person.

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Wild Abandon

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Wild Abandon is described as a dark plum creme. This is the other polish that had a thinner formula than the others. It still had great coverage in 2 coats despite being thinner. I had to change the warmth of this photo to better show how it looks in the bottle. My first photo is more color accurate than the second.

Overall I would say this was a fantastic collection. I’m surprised I liked it as much as I did to be perfectly honest. I will admit I gravitate heavily towards glitter, flakies and shimmer so creme formulas (outside of neons) don’t usually call to me. My top picks from this collection would have to be Canyon Clay and Roam With Me.

Everything applied easily and I had minimal cleanup work to do with wide brush Orly uses. I will note that it looks like they recently (?) changed their brush. I actually didn’t notice until I was taking my brush shot photos (after swatching everything) so for people like me who LOVED the old brush, the change shouldn’t be that big of a deal. The people who thought the old one was too wide should be happy!

The Color Pass box this month included these polishes, the Orly Matte top coat and a (sharp) cuticle pusher. I haven’t gotten a chance to try the matte top coat yet but the cuticle pusher works well. It’s a bit sharp so I might just end up using it cutting decals. I plan on giving a full review on the Color Pass box when the Winter collection ships. This was my first box and I really liked it.

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These are all currently available on the Orly website for $9.50 USD each or $19.50 for the gel polish version. You can also buy the Orly Color Pass box and save 50% if you buy the yearly subscription. To save $10 on Color Pass you can use the code DESERTMUSE. If you want to save some coins but don’t want to buy the Color Pass box, 8ty8Beauty always has Orly polishes (and other mainstream brands) at a deep discount. I usually buy my China Glaze polishes from there. As of the time of this posting, the fall collection isn’t up on the 8ty8Beauty website but it will be soon.

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