You've contoured your cheekbones, abs, legs, neck, jawline, collarbone, butt — basically every body part in existence — so now it's time for your nails to get in on the action.

"This is something I used to do when I was young," manicurist Jin Soon Choi told me. "When I was growing up, my friends and I wouldn't extend the color to the sides of our nails to make our nails look more elongated." 

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To create a longer-looking nail fast AF, all you do is use a clear base coat or lay down a lighter-colored coat of polish onto your nail, then sweep a deeper color down the middle. This is what gives you that contoured effect, just like how you'd use a highlighter above and below your cheekbones to make them look sharper. 

Choi put this the genius trick to use at the latest Vera Wang runway show at New York Fashion Week, where she painted a base coat on the models' nails, and swiped either a powder-pink white ("Doux") or a blackberry red shade ("Risque") down the center of their fingertips. To finish the look, she used a semi-matte topcoat, since it's not too matte or dull; regular topcoats will do too, but pure matte is too harsh, she says.

"This look is not only cool and creates the illusion of longer nails, it's really easy to execute because all you need is the brush that comes with the polish," she adds. 

Here's the look she created with a pinky-white stripe down the center:

Head, Nose, Lip, Finger, Hairstyle, Eye, Eyebrow, Eyelash, Organ, Nail, pinterest
Shana Trajanoska

And here's the look with the deep burgundy line down the middle:

Pretty cool, right? 

Want more nail contouring inspo? Keep scrolling:


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Carly Cardellino

Carly Cardellino was the beauty director at Cosmopolitan. If you follow her Instagram, then you know she'll try just about any beauty trend or treatment once (the pics of her purple hair are on IG to prove it). But her favorite part about being in beauty is finding the most effective products, and then sharing that intel with others—because who wants to spend money on stuff that doesn't work? No one, that's who. Her most recent discovery: De La Cruz Sulfur Ointment, which will change your blemish-clearing game! Hopefully through the beauty stories she writes—and the experiences she shares—you can see exactly why she's in this business.