NYFW Tip Alert: Deborah Lippmann on Removing Glitter Polish
Celebrity manicurist and founder of the eponymous nail brand Deborah Lippmann shook up the beauty world when she made psychedelic glitter nail polish relevant again. Her first glitter polish, “Happy Birthday,” launched in 2009, and was dubbed a “party in a bottle,” in part due to its easy, anything goes application. “As you polish your nail, whatever landed on it was what you worked with,” she once told Yahoo Beauty in reference to her now-iconic bottle. “You didn’t have to have the polish be so perfect. It could be a perfect mess.” Today, at the Kate Spade Spring 2016 show, she brought back the glitter, creating a “cotton candy confectionary splendor” using three polishes: pinky shimmery Magic is the Moonlight ($24), sparkling lilac Whatever Lola Wants ($18), and white creamy Amazing Grace ($18). The frosted, sugary result was both naughty and nice. The only downside to a playful manicure like this? The removal process. Backstage, right before she rushed to the Jason Wu show, Lippmann told Yahoo Beauty how to take off every speck of glitter without damaging your nails:
Deborah Lippmann’s iridescent nails for Kate Spade Spring 2016. (Photo: Instagram)
You need patience, patience, patience
“No scraping,” Lippmann warns. “If it’s a mica- or pearl-based glitter, that’s actual polish, and that’s just going to come off with nail polish remover.” Big chunky glitters, though, like many that Lippmann is famous for, will not dissolve with remover — which is where the virtue of patience comes in.
Saturate your nail with remover
For big chunky glitter, Lippmann recommends soaking a piece of cotton in remover and pressing it onto your nail. “Make it really, really, really wet,” she advises. Don’t rub your cuticle or your nail because the strong remover could cause damage to these parts — just let it soak and wait.
Use a cuticle nipper to remove stray glitter
“A certain amount of massaging on the nail is great because it brings blood to the cuticle,” she says. “But rubbing on the nail is irritating.” A cuticle nipper or a set of tweezers can simply lift the glitter off without adding stress to other areas of the nail. “It’s basically paper at this point,” she notes. “If you get the polish off that’s around the glitter piece, you can get to the edges of the speck.”
Do not follow your impulses
“Do not scrape it off. Do not file it off. Do not buff it off. Please. Please. Please,” Lippmann pleads, with the earnest efforts of a mother who knows her teenage daughter won’t listen anyway. “I know we all get tempted, but you know better.”
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