matte nail polish

Nail Polish

It's a Matte Matte Matte Matte World

If you thought the matte nail trend was a blip on the beauty radar, guess again.

If you thought the matte nail trend was a blip on the beauty radar, guess again. The no-shine look is popping up at show after show.

At Alexander Wang, an opaque neutral earned an urban edge thanks to Butter London's matte topcoat. Knock Out Cosmetics highlighted gloss-free blues and putties at DKNY, and at Behnaz Sarafpour, CND created a cashmere effect based on warm pinky-beige Desert Suede. Rounding off the list? Malandrino's cool heathered manicure (pictured), which you can recreate by applying CND polish in Dark Ruby, layering it with Copper Shimmer, and finishing with Super Matte top coat. (Subtract the shimmer shade and you've got the same look of Twinkle.)

See? Pure matteness.

Nail Polish

Matte Nail Polish Makes a Comeback. Maybe.

Matte nail polish, once the choice of adolescent grunge wannabes, had a brief blip of popularity circa '92.


Matte nail polish, once the choice of adolescent grunge wannabes, had a brief blip of popularity circa '92. Even Revlon got in on the action, offering a gloss-free red polish that I thought was so cool, so Sassy. Looking back, I now realize it wasn't quite as cool as I thought it was in ninth grade.

Or is it? Yep, gloss-free polish has returned. Man Glaze (big yech on the name) makes gray and black matte polishes that sell for $6.66 each. And KO cosmetics's "flatte" polish ($22) comes in pink, ivory, and black — as modeled here by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. There's no question that matte color is trying to make a comeback. The question is, will you take a shine to it?