The CEO Determined to Make Painting Your Nails Way Easier
I’ve never really been into painting my nails. I have little-kid hands and crazy-short nail beds. Combine that with poor dexterity and minimal patience, and what you get is a sloppy, bubbly mess of polished digits that are unfit for life outside of the living room.
And then I realized that it wasn’t me, thanks to Jane Park, the ceo of nail polish line Julep. She believes poor nail polish application isn’t about the person, but about the bottle. That’s why she created the Plié Wand, which is designed to make process a whole lot easier. “Women have a sucky tool for polishing their nails,” she told Fastcompany.com. “But they blame themselves, thinking they are just bad at using it.”
The Plié is $25 (or $20, if you already get Julep’s monthly subscription box of nail polishes). “Imagine if you’d spent your whole life writing with a pen cap and then someone finally handed you a full-size pen,” says the item description on Julep’s website. “That’s what it feels like to polish with the Plié Wand.” Indeed, the tool—which looks a lot like an elongated dunce hat— makes the act of painting nails feel less foreign. The handle snaps right onto an accompanying brush, and it also bends so you can lean your hand on it in a more comfortable way. (This is especially helpful on the left hand.)
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I decided to use Essie’s Snap Happy polish instead of one of the colors sent in Julep’s starter kit. (They were pretty, but I thought testing the tool on a polish that I use often was important. One of the greatest things about the brush that comes with the handle is that it can just be doused in nail polish remover, then used with another color.) I immediately noticed a difference in my technique: I wasn’t shaking as badly, and the brush seemed to be getting closer to actual nail. I usually only do one coat of color because too much globs onto the brush and then I get a little nail puddle. This time, I was able to do two. The polish was virtually bubble free and, thanks to the bendy handle, painting with my left hand worked just as well as my right.
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However, the Plié Wand could not save me from my sloppiness. I still brushed far past my nail bed, leaving color around the edges of my nail. To fix that, I dipped a Q-tip in nail polish remover and gingerly dabbed off the edges. (It’s a trick I learned in seventh grade from my fellow flutist Amber, she of the deep nail beds and shiny Chanel Vamp polish.) The last step was applying a couple drops of Qtica Half Time Polish Drying Accelerator to each nail.
In the end, did my polish look perfect? Of course not. But it did look good enough for me to wear out of the house. I’ll definitely be using my Julip Plié Wand now and again. It is sort of magical. Thank you, Ms. Park.
