Next Level In Nail Polish

Nail Polish So Tough, You’ll Outgrow It

MANICURES aren’t known for being everlasting. They chip. They smudge. Sometimes a nail is ruined even before you get home from the salon.  So it was curious to hear Michelle Mismas, who writes a nail-focused blog called alllacqueredup.com, describe the indestructibility of a recent manicure. “When I was wearing it, I beat my hands up, and I couldn’t get a scratch,” she said in a phone interview.

“I was banging into things on purpose to see if I could trash it.”Two weeks out, her dark raisin hue was the same shiny perfection. How? She was wearing Shellac, a soak-off hybrid between a gel and polish that will make its debut on May 1 in 2,000 salons nationwide. (She had a free sneak peek during New York Fashion Week in February.)

The product — the latest entry in a newish category of soak-off gels — has been five years in the making by Creative Nail Design, or CND. The company’s team mixed one-of-a-kind shades for runway models in the shows by Marc Jacobs and Jason Wu this year.

Soak-off gels look like polish but last much longer, in part because they are cured onto the nail with an ultraviolet lamp. The gel must be applied and removed by a professional, and the procedures cost more than the standard ones.

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