StrangeBeautiful

Menstrual Last Day, Gradations of a Bruise, Estuary Run-off, and Worn Black Bible are just a few of the shades in the latest nail polish collection from StrangeBeautiful. The brand's creator, illustrator (and RISD grad) Jane Schub, just released her fifth set of lacquers, Volume V limited edition polish collection ($79). Schub doesn't intend her polishes to be within the realm of "typical" shades, and instead of giving them names, she refers to them in terms of the materials that inspired them — hence the eccentric labeling.

Instead of the opacity you'd expect with such dark colors, the Volume V collection also makes nails look semi-opaque, as though they've been dipped in India ink. It's certainly the highest-concept polish we've run across, and, as Schub herself terms it, the most "perverse." See all the colors in the collection up close after the jump.

If Revlon's fruit-perfumed nail polishes and Mattese's cocktail-inspired scented lacquers don't agree with your nose, there's a luxe new competitor in the scented polish field. Nail lacquer impresario Jane Schub hired Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, the perfumer responsible for DSH perfumes, to help her create Richly Perverse Perfume Polish ($28) for her line StrangeBeautiful. The polish has a violet leather accord that's "an earthy chypre blend with notes of black leather, tobacco, ylang ylang, tuberose, and sandalwood."

It's slightly more sophisticated than other polish scents like Orange Fizz and Ocean Breeze (to say the least), and the scent lasts up to a day. Unlike other scented polishes, Richly Perverse is also clear, so it's not tied to any particular color. Would you be interested in giving this stuff a sniff?