While plenty of celebrities have the kind of influence and following to set a breakout haircut trend, Rihanna remains one of those rare celebs that has enough star power to launch a nail-art craze with a single Instagram post. She showed off a rainbow birthday manicure in February; rainbow nails were a certified trend by March. She flaunted lime-green nails earlier this year, essentially writing it into beauty law that neon nails would reign supreme come summer, and guess what? The universe obliged. Just last month, a bevy of copycats hopped on the bandwagon almost instantaneously after she rocked jade nails.
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Rihanna is always one to keep things interesting — and she's now decided to remix that jade manicure a bit with new lavender jade art shared on her Instagram Story.
To show (or maybe just brag about) how similar these nails look to authentic lavender jade, Rihanna paired the design with a necklace made of the real deal, which, according to her nail artist Jenny Longworth, served as inspiration for the gel design.
"The inspiration for this design was based on some of Rihanna’s favorite jewelry," Longworth tells Refinery29. "We're both hooked on these kind of textural nail art looks at the moment. We wanted the nails to look like another accessory, almost like another pice of jewelry on her fingertips."
As we've noted before, this trend feels like a fresher take on a marble manicure, especially since it's created with a similar marbling technique that involves mixing different tones of the same color on the nail. "I started with a really chalky lilac base all over the nail," Longworth says. "I cured that layer, and then dabbed some spots of a darker purple randomly over the top. I then used a nail art brush saturated in polish remover to lightly dab and dilute the darker purple dots to give a marbled effect. Finally, I added in some highlights with a thin brush in white gel polish, and finished with a super glossy top coat to bring the whole look together."
As you might have gathered already, this isn't a look that's exactly DIY-friendly, but we'd bet good money that that won't stop this trend from being all over Instagram — and salon nail-art menus — within a month flat.