The First Release Collection is made up of both the Philosophy 101 Collection and the Bonus Release Collection. These are two standalone collections I released at the debut of Polished Praxis. Each collection on its own has a dazzling color story, and the inspirations behind them come from some of the prototypes I made in the year leading up to launching my brand that I had the most fun with combined with my love for knowledge and learning. I also wanted to show a peek into the variety of what I plan to provide as more releases come, to give people a good look into what they can expect from the brand.
The Bonus Release Collection polishes are three polishes whose names I believe are fairly self-explanatory, and I just loved them so much I had to release them right away.
The Philosophy 101 collection is comprised of an assortment of polishes whose names are inspired by common concepts and thought experiments in philosophy. I had a lot of fun naming these and writing the descriptions up!
My two favorites from the Philosophy 101 collection, so far as the inspiration behind them goes, are Ship of Theseus and Sorites Paradox. I'd like to share more on what the names of those polishes mean here and what I wrote in the product descriptions, because these are such fun concepts to mull over.
Ship of Theseus:
The Ship of Theseus is a famous thought experiment about identity.
Imagine a ship belonging to the legendary Greek hero Theseus. Over time, its wooden planks begin to rot, so they are replaced one by one. Eventually, every single original plank has been replaced. The question that is then raised is, is it still the same ship after every plank has been changed out?
Most people will generally say yes, it is.
But now, suppose that someone collected all of the original parts of the ship that had been replaced over time, and constructed another ship of all of those original parts. Now we have two ships - are they both the Ship of Theseus? Is only one of them the ship? And if so, which one?
There aren't really any right or wrong answers to these questions. The experiment serves to help us examine how we think about what makes something itself.
My deepest condolences if you just wanted to buy some nail polish and now your head hurts.
Sorites Paradox:
The Sorites Paradox is sort of a philosophical paradox related to vagueness. It examines how we define terms and use them practically. The classic example is this:
A collection of 10,000 grains of sand is a heap of sand, but at which grain of sand did it become a heap? How many grains of sand would we need to remove before it is no longer a heap? The paradox asks if adding one grain of sand doesn't make a heap, when does it become a heap? Similarly, if buying one bottle of nail polish doesn't make it an addiction, at what exact bottle number should I start being concerned? If the line is a blurry one, then theoretically I'm only ever one bottle of polish away from having a perfectly normal hobby.
These are my first releases for Polished Praxis, but they certainly won't be my last! I look forward to bringing you all more beautiful shades. These first collections launched on August 1, 2026.
