Almost two weeks ago, I posted about a mystery vintage Zoya polish that I found in my mother’s things (you can read the original post here). Discovering one of my mother’s polishes from when she was a nail tech was special in its own right, but it was particularly exciting because Zoya is one of my fave polishes.
I contacted Zoya. I owe a big thank you to Kathleen. She posted my request on the internal employee Zoya blog and within less than an hour, I had my answer. The bottle is an original. They speculated the color was Carmen which is the very first Zoya color ever created (ZP001)! Kathleen arranged for a color spoon to be sent to me right away so I could do a comparison. (If you don’t know what a color spoon is, then check out this link. It’s a neat Zoya program that allows you to test run a color before you buy it.)
The spoon came and I knew instantly it was a match. I ordered Carmen to be absolutely sure (like I need a reason to buy polish!) The color spoon seemed to match my original bottle even better than my new bottle.
But once I compared the two side-by-side...they were an exact match. [click to enlarge]
The picture below is from a Zoya blog post in 2010 showing the evolution of the Zoya bottle. The shape of my mother's bottle was used until 1997. At some point the word ZOOM came off the label (my vintage bottle has ZOOM on it)…but I don’t know when (I have some sleuthing yet to do!)
 |
| Evolution of the Zoya Polish Bottle: (L to R) Original, 1997, and 2005 |
So I’ve taken my original Zoya bottle in the original Zoya color and hung it in a shadow box in my office. I’ll pull it out once a year to wear on Mother’s Day (but maybe just one coat!) If Zoya is taking suggestions for polish names…then my mother’s name, Victoria, would be nice.
Thanks again to the folks at Zoya who helped me track this down. It’s no surprise to find great people behind a great polish. Thanks again!
