A Met Gala Detail You Missed: Cynthia Erivo’s Elaborate, Flora-Filled Manicure

While we wait expectantly for Cynthia Erivo to grace the silver screen as Elphaba in the film adaptation of Wicked (which still doesn’t come out until November 2024), we can’t help but notice that her beauty and fashion choices have taken a turn for the greener in the past few months.

Erivo has never been one to hit the red carpet without an impressive and usually dangerously sharp manicure, but as of late, they’ve been particularly witchy (as in “of the West”). She’s worn mint nails with pink flowers accented by rhinestones for CinemaCon, lime- and neon-green swirls at the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award Gala, and a metallic emerald French manicure encrusted with diamonds for the Oscars.

The nail artist behind all these recent manicure moments is Erivo’s go-to manicurist Rose Hackle, who turned out Erivo’s most captivating look yet for the Met Gala held on May 6: a manicure featuring natural elements like plants, petals, and insects suspended in amber — only it was really acrylic nails and and OPI GelColor Stay Shiny Top Coat.

Hackle shared the details behind the Met Gala look, which fit the “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” theme aptly, on her Instagram. She noted that the first steps were to create the acrylic base for the nail and then directly secure the earthy elements to it. Two accent nails encapsulated shiny, green dried beetles and teeny succulents into the length of a clear nail. The other digits incorporated rose petals and gold flakes into similarly long nail tips for a maximalist French manicure. The base of the French was created using OPI GelColor in Bubble Bath (a translucent pale pink) traced along the edge of the nail tip with a pencil thin line of GelColor in Midnight Snacc (a dark, forest green).

This may be a more involved manicure than most of us are willing to wait for in the salon, but for a night at the Met (or Erivo’s Wicked new aesthetic), it hits just right. It wouldn’t be surprising if soon we’re all scavenging for tiny bits of flora to slip into our next manicure.