Sometimes fashion can make a real statement. At Opening Ceremony, the coming election and the spectacle of pageantry are motivators for the looks behind the show—except when it came to the two nail looks, a wavy design and a striped design, courtesy of China Glaze Nail Lead Naomi Yasuda. Rather than find inspiration in the idea of pageantry, Yasuda instead turns to the patterns found in the collection. For the striped look, she applies base coat and then paints a thick black line ¾ of the way up the nail, leaving the bottom ¼ bare. Then, a horizontal stripe of primary color—either China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, DJ Blue My Mind and Hey Sailor—or grey Change Your Altitude is added where the black meets the negative space.
Lest you think she polished these aforementioned stripes, think again: Yasuda swears by Scotch tape as her mode to clean lines. “It makes it so much easier this way,” she says. “You paint the Scotch tape [with your preferred polish], let it dry, cut it into small, small lines, and then press,” she instructs. To smooth the ridges the tape may create, she floats a coat of top coat over top.
For the wavy nail art design, Yasuda uses DJ Blue My Mind, Change Your Altitude, White on White and Concrete Catwalk. Like the striped design, she leaves negative space at the bottom of the nail. Then, “pick any color from the four colors to fill that space,” she says, pointing to the thick S-shaped line she swishes across the nail. For each nail, the wave is random; there’s no uniformity to the curves or even the distance down the nail. She lets the first wave dry and then overlaps a second color a little above the first one in another wave pattern—but it doesn’t necessarily parallel the wave shape underneath. Then, a third wave in a different color overlaps right near the nail’s free edge—again, randomly placed and swooped from nail to nail. When all is dry, Yasuda blends the design with a layer of top coat. —Emilie Branch
Image credits: Courtesy of ©MatthewCarasella/SocialShutterbug.com; Emilie Branch
Model poses wearing one of two looks created by Naomi Yasuda for Opening Ceremony.
A close up of the neutral manicure for Opening Ceremony S/S 2017.
Naomi Yasuda’s nails down the Opening Ceremony runway.
The second look Naomi Yasuda created for Opening Ceremony S/S 2017.
A close up of the manicure Yasuda created using Scotch Tape.
Model poses with her manicure and China Glaze polish backstage.
Model poses with her technicolor manicure by Yasuda.
