From the Vintage Vault

Today I bring you a "very special edition" of From the Vintage Vault. I"ll only be featuring one product in this post, which happens to be a product that is extremely near and dear to my heart. That product is MAC Nail Polish (they weren't called "Nail Lacquers" back in the day) in the shade Jungle Fever:

MAC Nail Polish in Jungle Fever

(2001)

Keep reading for more pics, comparisons and swatches (yes, swatches!)...

Jungle Fever was the first nail polish I can remember being absolutely obsessed with. Before that? Sure, I loved certain polishes, but it wasn't until Jungle Fever came along that I recall being so absolutely captivated by a nail color (much more on why, in a minute).

Jungle Fever was a limited edition Nail Polish from the Summer 2001 Eden Rocks Color Story (does anyone refer to MAC collections as Color Stories anymore??). This was one of my favorite LE collections from MAC--oh how I miss those China Markers!

(Since we're getting nostalgic here, allow me to reminisce about another MAC Color Story from yesteryear. Does anyone remember Peacenick from February 2002? That was my first introduction to MAC's Rosemary & Thyme Eye Kohl, which then  became another huge obsession of mine for a few years.)

Back to this polish:

Back in the day, MAC Nail Polishes (now Nail Lacquers) contained 0.47 oz of product. Now they contain 0.34 oz and of course the bottle is dramatically different:

MAC nail polish: then and now

I suspect that they got rid of the frosted glass bottles because it made it difficult to see the actual color/finish of each polish. But oh how I miss the caps on the old MAC polishes. They had little grooves on them which gave them a nice grip, and they didn't get dirty like the rubberized handles of today.

Brush width hasn't really changed.

A closer look at Jungle Fever:

What made this polish so special back in the day was that, in 2001, you just didn't see polishes that were this sparkly. We take sparkly polishes for granted now, but the finish of Jungle Fever was so unique back then, and the color was too. I certainly had NEVER seen a golden-tangerine sparkly polish at the drugstore before. Heck, I hadn't seen one anywhere before!

This color became a huge deal for my friends and me (this was pre-beauty blogs so I can only assume it was a huge deal for others as well). I remember that one of my roommates at the time tried to claim that this bottle was hers. That obviously caused a huge polish meltdown in the house, and after that blowout I decided that we all needed to grab a Sharpie pen and put our first initial on ALL bottles of polish in the house. 

It's a little faded but you can still make it out:

This polish is MINE, damnit! See that "G"??

Sidenote: It's been years since I wrote my "Gs" like that. I hate that little line that comes down on the right-hand side and I cringe whenever I see old papers where I signed my name with a "G" like that. So ugly. Ugh.

Now for some swatches (I don't wear this polish anymore because it's achieved "covet" status, but I made an exception for this blog post):

Three coats, no top coat. Picture taken with flash.

The rest of these swatches were taken indoors without flash and are much more true-to-life:

This color is sheer even after three coats, but LIKE I CARED?! 

It was stunning to me then, and it's still beautiful to me today--look at all that tangerine goodness with all the beautiful gold shimmer and sparkle. Juicy and yummy!

Thanks so much for taking this stroll down memory lane with me! Do any of you remember Jungle Fever? Did you own and love it back in the day? I"d love to hear from you!