essie bordeaux Swatches + Review
Published 2026-01-30. This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you make a purchase - at no extra cost to you.
The story of bordeaux begins much earlier than 1981 - it started in 1949, when essie’s founder, Essie Weingarten was born.
When she was a little girl in Queens, New York, she loved having her nails painted.
Her mother would take her to get her nails done if she did well in ballet. Her father would also take her to his cousin’s pharmacy, where he would let her pick out any polish she wanted of the twenty or so available.
The colors back then were more limited in options, and it got Essie’s mind thinking - what if she created more colors? What if it was she who could fill the void in the world of nail color?
So in 1981, she went looking for a chemist to create nail colors with $10,000, her life’s savings, as the original investment.
As she travelled around, she would save colors she liked and he would match them up as a nail color.
Her idea was that if it was pleasing to the eye, it would be pleasing to the soul, so any color she found pleasing, he would create.
bordeaux was the first burgundy color they made and it’s what we’ll be looking at in this post. She describes it like a fine bottle of red wine.
The other first color they created that is still around today is blanc, a stark, chalk white, perfect for a french manicure.
Both of these shades are now 45 years old and remain a fixture on the essie best sellers list.
ballet slippers, was created in 1982, the second year essie was in business, making that classic now 44 years old.
Originally, these polishes were sold door to door. She’d get in the car, see salons, stop in and pass out the samples in the trunk.
It really took off when she did this same technique in Las Vegas, where all the show women with money to spend had to look perfectly manicured.
These polishes are now sold at retailers worldwide and they are mainly produced in 6 piece sets - as Essie originally liked it - although essie the brand was sold to L'Oréal in 2010.
Selling turned out to be a good thing for nail polish lovers, because at the time, essie had 300 colors and L'Oréal helped expand that line up to over 1,000.
Let’s look at a few swatches:
You could easily wear it in 2, though it will look a bit more like a burgundy jelly. I have also worn it in 1 coat if I’ve been in a hurry, but it is very sheer that way.
In the end, Essie’s dream came true.
She did fill the void in the world of nail color and essie now has made thousands of shades, in many different colored nuances, and of those thousands, bordeaux is a shade we keep coming back to.
I appreciate the many colors essie offers and I especially love the embossed lettering on the square bottle, though they originally were cylindrical.
More recently, they upgraded from a thin to a wide brush, and that shift has been nice too - it’s easier to do your nails quickly as you cover more ground in fewer strokes with the wider brush.
The bordeaux formula, as with all essie formulas, have been updated over the years and currently the newest formula is free of all the major toxins, like phthalates, parabens, toluene and formaldehyde.
So while bordeaux’s bottle and formula has been perfected over the years, this classic wine red burgundy remains a must have for any collector’s polish vanity.
If you’re a nail polish fan, and enjoy burgundy shades, I think you will find that bordeaux is worth the try.
Other Articles You May Enjoy:
As an Ulta Affiliate, this site earns from qualifying purchases.
