Color Club The Uptown - New Formula

Today's regularly schedule post has been postponed (what? You think I just post whenever, nah...I have a schedule, with Google calendar reminders and everything...although I don't tend to stick to it...heh.) Anyways, recently I found myself in the middle of a small controversy...or a large one if you where also searching for the Uptown like I was. My #1 polish lemming, the one thing I couldn't find and really wanted, is Color Club's The Uptown, from 2013's fall collection. It was a sheer purple jelly with color-shifting flakes. It's been sold out online for months and I can't find Color Club locally (I found some random bottles at CVS once, and got all excited, dragged my kids through the entire beauty section until I finally asked an employee if they had more in the hopes that The Uptown would be there but sadly, no).
About a month ago I noticed that it was finally back in stock at Llarowe.com so I waited for a while until I had the money and took advantage of the Llarowe Store Grand Opening Sale. I was so excited! Then the day arrives, my nail mail is here, and to my disappointment...it didn't look the same as all the gorgeous swatches I had seen online. So I made a post in Polishaholics Anonymous, posting that picture above, asking if anyone knew if the formula had changed. You can see the post here if you happen to be a member.

UPDATE: I got permission from some lovely ladies to share their swatches of the original for comparison.

@paintmewithpolish- Becki

@teismom - Linda

@i_heartnailpolish - Kristy

Everyone agreed that it wasn't the same, some suggested it might be a mislabeled bottle of "Alias" and to contact Llarowe. Since it was cloudy and already almost dark, I decided to wait until morning to take some more pics in the hopes that the flakes where only visible in sunlight. They where not. So I contacted Llarowe and send in the next pic as an attachment.

The bottle in the top left corner is a screenshot from Llarowe's website. As you can see, mine looks nothing like it. Instead, I have a dark purple jelly with golden shimmer. Where are the flakes?

I got asked to send in more swatches, just to make sure, so I sent them this collage.

Let's have a closer look at some of them..please excuse the messy clean-up and dry cuticles. This was swatched and taken really quickly.  I am wearing just one coat in all the pics, so you can see how opaque it is.

The Uptown? In my light box.

In my light box, on a cloudy evening, all I saw was golden shimmer on a dark purple base.

Sun came out the next morning. Look, there be some color shifting happening in the bottle. I got my hopes up a bit.

Indoors, direct sunlight shinning through a window. Boo, no flakes, hopes shattered.

Bottom of the bottle so you can see I'm not making this up. The flakes look golden and very small.

Outside, hoping for better results...nope. I can see the shift happening in the bottle but not on my nails. If I squint I can sorta make out some pretty, shimmery, flakes, but they are very small. Don't get me wrong, this is a really pretty color, but it's not The Uptown.

Light box and LED lamp. Looks gorgeous, but no color shifting flakes. I started calling them micro-flakes/shimmer in the emails by this point.

Here's what it looks like on the brush. You can see the tiny golden flakes.

Indoors, indirect sunlight. I played around with angles until I finally found one that showed off the color shift in the bottle but barely on my nails.

Same angle and lighting as above, closer look.

So..what happened in the end? After several people also emailed Llarowe and they got in touch directly with Color Club, they confirmed that the formula had indeed changed since they couldn't get any more of the original color shifting flakes. They offered to refund my bottle, which I decided to keep in the end since what I originally wanted had been to exchange it, thinking it had been a mislabel. So...I have the sads, still no original The Uptown for me.

Ladies, if anyone has a swatch of the original and would allow me to post it here to compare, I'd appreciate it. There's lots on Google, but I'm not going to copy/paste someone else's work without their permission first.

UPDATE: I got swatches! Thanks to Becky from @paintmewithpolish, Linda from www.nailvinyls.com and @teismom, and Kristy from @i_heartnailpolish for lending me their swatches! I really appreciate it.

There you have it. How we found out that Color Club has changed the formula of the Uptown.

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