FASHION Magazine

There was a time when shades like Essie’s “Wicked” (a dark blood red) and “Ballet Slippers” (a pinky nude) were the only acceptable options in the workplace. “Your nail polish colours had to be serious,” says Rita Remark, Essie’s global lead educator. This is not the case anymore, she adds, with more than a little […]

The post Essie’s Rita Remark Shows Us Her Favourite (and Totally DIY-able) Nail Art Trends appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

We’ve all made beauty mistakes—from the chunky blonde streaks of our youth, to self-tanner blunders, we firmly believe that missteps are how we learn what works for us and what doesn’t. In our new series, Beauty Confessionals, our editors are admitting to some of their biggest beauty regrets. We do this because we care and we want you to learn from our mistakes (and because we want to hear your beauty confessionals, for we are all children of the internet and enjoy embarrassing ourselves online). Since this series was my cruel idea (am I cyber-bullying my coworkers?) I’ll kick things off.

One of my biggest beauty regrets is my total lack of regard when it comes to maintaining fake nails. In my lifelong quest to become Rihanna, three years ago I adopted her signature nail look—long, bright, and obviously fake. My shape of choice was pointy stiletto nails, partly because I was never brave enough for the square tips she’s been sporting as of late. Regardless, my motto was “the longer, the better” which is all fine and well, until you take into consideration the fact that I went two full years of getting bi-weekly fills and never giving my nails a chance to breathe. It’s no secret that fake tips aren’t great for the health of your real nails, but if you get them removed for a week every two months or so, it’s possible to maintain tips that are in pretty good shape.

It’s a trend we’ve been trying to ignore for a while, but Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi keeps trying to make it happen—the duckbill nail. Dubbed as such because of the way the nail gets wider at the ends, it takes a long afternoon at the salon to achieve this extremely fake nail look. Seen as recently as yesterday, at the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards, we’re hoping the duckbill trend doesn’t have wings and will stay in the Jersey Shore forever. But red carpet after red carpet (who, exactly, keeps inviting her?) Snooki is there, showing off her bedazzled, duckbill’d tips. There are about a thousand adjectives to describe why we hate this look, with “artificial” and “acrylic” topping the list. Actually, we’d maybe even like the airbrushed art she’s wearing (in a Katy Perry sort of way) if it was paired with a more naturally shaped nail.

Vote now and tell us what you think »