Dupes Or Not? Zoya Ki vs GOSH Purple Heart

You know you've got a large enough stash when you finally have dupes of things in your stash! You know what I mean - the two brown eyeshadows that look exactly alike, or the two pale pink glosses that are exactly the same when you wear them. I guess having duplicates is a sign that you're having too much. In that case, I guess I'm almost reaching the optimal number of bottles of nail polish to have, because...I have a dupe! Sort of. It depends.

Over the course of my purple and duochrome fetish, I've collected GOSH Purple Heart and Zoya Ki - both of which are dear to my little beating heart because they're both purple, AND duochromes. How cool is that! They also both apply well, and dry relatively fast (the GOSH definitely dries faster than the Zoya though). However, they're also both deep violet purples with green duochrome, so I decided to get both of them out one fine day to see if they were really dupes or not!

Here's a bottle pic of both of them side by side: GOSH Purple Heart is on top, Zoya Ki is at the bottom. Please ignore the fact that there are stray cotton bits stuck to the GOSH bottle - it's all Superdrug's fault for sticking these HUGE eternally sticky tags on their bottles that just pick up any speck of dust in sight. (They should find out what kind of glue Superdrug uses and just make Superglue out of that.)



Hmmm, they do look dupe-y, don't they? But of course, looks can be deceiving (I mean, really! Think of all the good-looking guys out there who are jackasses...but I digress), so I decided to swatch them.

This is one coat of both on all the nails. Please be warned - these are quick and dirty swatches, so they're REALLY BAD. Like, you know, polish on cuticles, polish overflow, raggedy cuticles, weird nail shapes and lengths (we do not mention that..My nails have been through a hard time, and they don't like to talk about it). I've just ordered Burt's Bees Cuticle Cream, and I hope it'll fix part of the problem, and as you can tell these were photos from before my nails became nubbins. In anycase, consider yourself forewarned.



GOSH Purple Heart is on the index and ring, while Zoya Ki is on the middle and pinky fingers.

Now they look different. For one, the Zoya is a lot more sheer than the GOSH. In fact, the GOSH is practically opaque in one coat (which is why it's one of my favourite polishes to Konad with - check out this KOTD and this KOTD for proof of it's Konading awesomeness), but I don't think I'd Konad with the Zoya. So if you want a polish to Konad with, definitely go with the GOSH.

But of course, since few people use just one coat of polish, here are "proper" swatches, with two coats of polish on each nail:



GOSH Purple Heart is on the index and ring, while Zoya Ki is on the middle and pinky fingers.

Okay, so they're not dupes, but they're similar. Both of them are a similar shade of deep violet purple, with a green duochrome. The only difference is that the GOSH is a lot more of a vampy colour, as it's more blackened, whereas Ki is still visibly purple in most lights. Purple Heart also has this very pretty glowy, lit-from-within quality that makes it almost black around the edges but glowy purple on the front of the nail. Very cool. Ki has a similar kind of glowiness, but it's not quite a vampy, because it's not blackened enough.

So which one should you buy? It depends. Do you want your purple-green duochromed very blackened? If so, take the GOSH. Do you want to Konad with it? Then definitely take the GOSH. Do you want it to be visibly purple in most lights? Take the Zoya. I suppose for that among non-nail fanatics, noone's going to notice the difference, even though they're not dupes. However, I'm kind of happy that they're not all that similar - it means I get to keep both!