Femme Fatale: Swept Across the Sea Review

Femme Fatale is an Australian indie brand that creates make up pigments and nail polish, and also stocks a variety of other indie brands for sale (eg. Arcana, Cirque Colors, Emily de Molly, Solstice Scents) on their website.

Their best sellers are their nail polish, and they held a reissue event last year and popular vote brought back Swept Across the Sea. This shade is described as : 

A stunning tan (warm) to teal-blue (cool) thermal with a bright green overlay. The overlay makes the warm state very caramel-apple looking, and the cool state a gorgeous, rich teal. From our 2016 release ‘Birth of Venus’; this is a re-release.

This shade retailed for  $15.40 AUD. 

The formula of this scent was generally fine to work with - like most thermals, this had a relatively more fluid consistency but dried down quickly to a semi-matte finish. It self levels, and was not particularly streaky and layered easily - it was a smidge translucent and needed at least 3 coats for full opacity. I liked the application of this formula and had no issues with the thermal transitions. 

Here are some swatches: 

Cold state taken in shade : 

Both warm and cold states taken with flash: 

Both warm and cool states taken in natural sunlight. 

Warm state taken in yellow light: 

A small note: 

As you may have noticed, the color is a little different from the written description provided as a 'stunning tan' or 'caramel apple looking'. For comparison, here are some of the original swatches that were provided (source for picture 2) 

I was pretty disappointed with this shade personally speaking - as I felt that despite trying this shade out in so many different angles and temperatures, I really was never quite able to get it to the color that was shown in the swatch pictures - which I have taken directly from the website. This is an evident lack of consistency between batches. The cool state that I had was actually far darker than the swatch pictures I saw on the website - in fact I had initially suspected that this was actually a wrongly labelled bottle and that they had sent me a similar shade also available during the reissue event (Neverland, picture for reference). 

I reached out directly to Femme Fatale about my concerns about the shade either being wrongly labelled or the shade having been reformulated without sufficient information provided on the website. The reply I received was as follows, 

Swept uses a tan (warm) to navy (cold) thermal with the strong green shimmer over top. Sometimes thermal pigments can vary between batches; and this colour originally came out 4 years ago, which means since then and now there's almost definitely multiple thermal pigment batches by the manufacturer. So this means that the cold state could be stronger in this batch, compared to the original batch.

Personally speaking - unlike with perfume where consistency between batches are hard to verify, I believe that visual evidence of clear discrepancies between shades is quite obvious. Considering how nail polish is something you buy for the specific colors, I would not even consider the bottle I received to even be a dupe of the shade. I replied with this sentiment - and to add, I've never had any issues with swatches and color discrepancy from the brand before. I recevied this reply: 

 Because this will vary through seasons. I popped our batch sample on to compare with our swtahces, and (bcause my hands are super cold!) used a blow dryer to switch it through to warm, and each state is showing as should, as what I can see in our swatches. Not all the swatches show a full cold state, the emilydemolly is the primary one that shows both the cold and hot. Unfortunately that can't be helped as our swatchers are from various continents that had different weather temperatures etc at the time - this is something that even now, when we get thermal swatches, not all of them will achieve all states. 

If we sent you a replacement bottle it would be exactly the same, because it uses the same thermal pigment I'm afraid.  

I found this reply a little baffling as Femme Fatale regularly uses swatchers all over the world (including America), and I don't believe that a domestic order would end up corrupting or changing the inherent composition of the product - especially having ordered multiple thermals from the store, and thermals from other brands located in North America which have performed exactly the same as shown in swatches. After expressing this sentiment, I asked if a return was possible, and I was given a refund of the price with store credit. 

Unfortunately, despite really liking the brand and wanting to support a small indie brand, this exchange initially left me a little baffled and upset - I have had no problems up till now with the brand and color discrepancies so it seems that consistency is something the brand should not have issues with. After raising what I see as a strange issue, it was definitely shocking to me that such a visible difference in color was not clearly acknowledged. Femme Fatale also has a Facebook group - but this group forbids members from raising customer issue services. I personally would have been happy to return the product if possible due to really, genuinely not ever needing this shade or wearing it but I am thankful and grateful that I was able to get a refund despite the circumstances. However, I am not confident in saying that any future issues will be effectively and thoroughly addressed if you do have any problems with your order.