Halfway through my time quarantining with my family, my mother tasked me with touching up her roots. “It’s very simple,” she said, handing me a box of dye that promised a “nice ’n easy” 10-minute transformation. Hours—and more than one emergency call to her hairdresser—later, I swore off the do-it-yourself self-maintenance route, vowing to abstain from any and all beauty treatments until I could safely return to the salon. That is, until Bare Hands’s new at-home manicure kit (housed in a chic, compact vegan-leather case) arrived my way. The allure? Nourished, natural nails—without the potential pitfalls of polish.
Inside, I found two wooden cuticle sticks, a glass-and-mineral-blend buffer, a hydrating-oil pen, and a small slip of paper printed with a Q.R. code leading to the brand’s two short tutorial videos, which offer step-by-step instructions on how to achieve what Bare Hands calls “the dry gloss manicure.” Following along, I exfoliated my cuticles with a homemade sugar-and-vegetable-oil (any will do!) paste before picking up the half-moon-shaped transparent polishing tool. Using the textured side, I rubbed it in short strokes over my nails until they began to exude a healthy sheen. A coat of the jojoba-and-castor-seed-based oil came last. I was immediately taken with the high-shine results and can happily report that even six days later my nails are still smooth and almost blindingly bright. No appointment required.
Source: vogue.com
