Gwyneth Paltrow’s moon manicure revives 1930s look in Marty Supreme

Gwyneth Paltrow’s character Kay Stone in the film Marty Supreme briefly shows a striking half-moon manicure — a pointy red nail with a creamy crescent at the cuticle — when she answers a rotary phone in a scene set in the Ritz. The undulating design, now called the half-moon or moon manicure, was common in the mid-to-late 1930s and appeared on Vogue covers and on actresses such as Carole Lombard, Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong.

Suzanne E. Shapiro, author of Nails: The Story of the Modern Manicure, said the look “wouldn’t have been called moon manicure because that was the default style,” and that amplifying the lunula made an almond-shaped nail appear longer. The film is set in the 1950s, and the manicure is presented not as an anachronism but as a deliberate choice: Kay Stone is introduced walking through the Ritz lobby as reporters discuss her fame, and the character is shown preparing a comeback almost two decades after her heyday.

Makeup artist Kyra Panchenko said she wanted to “bring something from her past into her character,” which led to reviving the démodé manicure. Because creating a pristine 1930s moon manicure would have taken a painstaking amount of time, the Marty Supreme team opted for press-ons.

Nail artist Pattie Yankee painted each moon freehand on press-ons measured to Ms. Paltrow’s nail beds, making seven press-on sets, including extras (around 80 total), for numerous on-camera nail changes. Ms.

Key Topics

Culture, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marty Supreme, Moon Manicure, Ritz Hotel, Kyra Panchenko