The Italian Manicure Is Nothing But A Simple Optical Illusion

Many have retired their acrylics to the far-reaching recesses of their closets and summoned their trusty nail polish to the scene. They’ve only recently discovered a way to endow their lacquers with length without actually growing them at all. It’s all thanks to the Italian Manicure — a trend that has successfully exiled the attention-catching wide, stubby nail-beds and welcomed long, elongated nails on board. What is the Italian Manicure anyway? Here’s what you need to know about this trend, and how to DIY easily.

The Italian Manicure Plays Around With A Simple Illusion

This manicure plays into the illusion of longer lacquers — simply because of the way in which the nail is painted. You move your brush as close to your cuticles (without touching the skin as per manicurist Alexandra Teleki) and paint a line right down the centre — leaving a little space between the sides of the nail and the nail polish. The catch is that you’re focusing more on the middle than filling in the entire nail.

This low-maintenance manicure is a win-win because you’re elongating the nails without actually altering their length at all. It can also make wide, short, and stubby nail-beds look thinner — further lengthening and elongating. The style translates well on wide, squoval, short, and square-shaped nails — nails that fan out, or are wider in general. You can achieve the same end goal by painting your nail and going over the sides with an acetone-dipped Q-tip. Notice how the colourless negative spaces on the sides aren’t quite visible — just enough to lengthen your nails deceptively.

There’s no Italian manicure vs French manicure because they’re completely different from each other. You can actually combine this aesthetic with the French Manicure — which involves painting just the tips of your nails. But instead of focusing the paint on just the tips in a crescent-like shape, try starting further up the nail, and creating more of a U on the sides.

Some do find that the nails look unfinished by the end of the manicure because the sides aren’t painted in, but it depends on your likes and preference. The good news is that the manicure can be done with any kind of nail polish: gel or otherwise.

French-Italian Fusion

Notice how the tips are more U-shaped than crescented, and start further up the nail. To play into the look more, you can accentuate the U more by painting halfway up the sides of the nails.