L.A. has long been an enclave for beauty, with its storied movie lots serving up screenstar-caliber primping and priming (and its scalpel-wielding doctors performing all manner of nipping and tucking). But the City of Angels has recently put itself on the map as a destination for new, improved services that meld luxury and convenience. With [...]

Back in the old days—before nail decals, Minx, neon lacquers, and crackle topcoats—women frequently wore their nails in the buff, rubbing a rose cream into the nail bed that, when polished and shined, produced a red-hued finish. “A raincoat of color” is how CND nail tech Angie Wingle explains the effect, which she reinvigorated backstage [...]

Last season’s nude nail continues to make a strong showing so far for Spring (BCBG Max Azria, The Row, Peter Som), but the nail-art movement isn’t going out without a fight. Jin Soon Choi doubled up on purple, creating a “slim silhouette” with layered lilac and sparkling amethyst lacquers backstage at Prabal Gurung (more on [...]

Creative Nail Design has a full dance card pretty much every fashion week. Altuzarra. 3.1 Phillip Lim. Jen Kao. Karen Walker. Those are just a few of the many designers turning over finger-painting duties to the CND experts for Spring. Though its talented artists deserve much of the credit for the innovative backstage nail creations, [...]

The Fall shows saw their fair share of in-your-face nail art (think: Prabal Gurung, Ruffian, and Topshop), but things took a turn for the subtle during the second half of the season, with foundation-inspired hues turning up at Jean Paul Gautier, Yves Saint Laurent, and Giambattista Valli. Unlike picking out a classic crimson or muted [...]

Much to our chagrin, the Spring manicure mania that persisted through the Fall shows in New York and London died down a bit in Milan and has been nearly nonexistent in Paris. Save for a few Sophy Robson sightings (at Loewe and then at Emanuel Ungaro this morning—more on that in a bit), it’s been [...]

Karlie Kloss is probably best known for those brow-tastic Marc Jacobs campaigns and her impressive stature. At 5′ 11″, the Midwesterner towers over many of her cohorts, kicking her long legs out in front of her body for one of the most mind-boggling walks in the biz. Believe it or not, Kloss is also one [...]

Makeup artist Tom Pecheux told us that metallics would be huge for Fall when we ran into him this morning, and they’ve already made two appearances today. The first was courtesy of Pecheux himself on cheeks and lips at Peter Som; the second came a few short hours later in the models’ hair at Jason [...]

Fashion week may be dominating the style set’s attention right now, but come Sunday, the spotlight will shift to the music world as the Grammys get under way. A grandiose excuse for overexposed pop stars (and their labels) to pat each other on the back, the awards show does offer up a welcome and amusing [...]

Sand, flesh, taupe—whatever you want to call it, the nail color that cropped up on many a fingertip at the Spring 2011 collections wasn’t much of a color at all. At Marc Jacobs, Creative Nail Design crafted foundation-hued manicures; at Narciso Rodriguez, Deborah Lippmann topped beige nails with a coat of shiny shimmer; at Erin [...]