When was the last time your tips’n’toes matched? For me it must have been when I was about 10 and working with whatever polish I had manage to pilfer from my mother. For all of recent beauty history, to be matchy-matchy with finger and toenail lacquer was to commit a fashion faux pas – the beauty equivalent of double denim.
Why choose, when I could do a bordeaux for one and navy blue for the other? Or racing green fingers and chocolate toes, perhaps. It would never have occurred to me to pull just one swatch from the salon colour wheel, or a single bottle from the chemist’s shelf. I’ve seldom seen a match on anyone else, either (there are several chat threads about whether a synchronised toe-and-hand scheme is even permissible in modern society).
But beauty is a fickle mistress and matching tips’n’toes are, I am informed by London’s coolest nail artists, extremely hot for the first time in a couple of decades.
The very talented Julia Diogo, AKA Instagram’s @paintedbyjools and resident nail artist at Corinthia spa in central London, has recently seen a sharp increase in requests for a single hue at both extremities.
“The matching mani and pedi is very much back,” she says, and it seems this is largely thanks to the “clean girl” minimalism movement in fashion and beauty, in which women are cutting out vivid colour, prints and fuss for a simpler style that’s more effortless in appearance.
Diogo believes it stands to reason that women dressing from a limited colour palette will want to keep any additional nail shades to a minimum. “Everyone seems to be stripping back to a neutral wardrobe. People want to look classic and well put together. A matching mani and pedi really adds to that chic aesthetic,” she says.
According to Diogo, the chosen colour is invariably frost- and shimmer-free. Her clients – me among them – consult their diaries and most often pick milky nude pinks, glossy scarlet or deep blood-red tones (Diogo swears by Bio Sculpture’s salon-only Pinotage, but Nailberry’s Noirberry, £15, and CND’s Vinylux in Oxblood or Bloodline, both £8.95, can give a similar look at home) for their ability to match any event, outfit or dress code, and to ensure no jarring with surrounding colours or schemes.This is very much a 1970s mum-style paint job, only shorter in length – and without the smouldering Silk Cut.
