Rings and Nail Polish
More than once, in selecting a ring, a woman has rejected one that was quite beautiful, because it did not look well on her hands. This is an excellent reason—if the hands were not prejudiced by the nail polish. The polish should be fitted to the ring, not the ring to the polish. In other words, when the selection of a ring is the business of the day, a neutral polish or none at all should be worn. After the ring has been chosen, the polish should be selected to complement the stone. With the colored stones of a dinner ring, this is important.
With a diamond ring, for example, the frosty white nail polish should be avoided, as it diminishes the beauty of the gem. With a coral ring, the nail polish that suggests itself is of an orange hue. With a ruby, perhaps a purplish polish, but not too deep, lest by its ardor it make the ruby look pale. Some colored stones will be attractive with more than one shade of nail polish. A little experimentation and taste can create surprisingly varied and dramatic effects, as the nails, differently colored for an evening and for a weekend afternoon, differently interplay with the colors of the ring.
About Wearing a Ring
Some fashions in rings and their wearing call for brief comment. Although the Elizabethan men and three hundred years later their sisters in the frenzied Twenties of this century wore rings over their gloves, the practice has lapsed from good taste. A ring with a large stone or a dome-shaped design should be turned with this toward the palm before a glove is put on; there will then be no difficulty nor tear.
The current fashion of fingernails keeps them long and almost pointed. A woman who for practical or other reasons wears her nails short will find that her rings appear to better advantage if she keeps her bracelets a little higher on the arm. This, in a sense, incorporates part of the wrist into the hand, giving at that end the greater length which has been lost at the other.
Rings should always be taken off when the hands are washed. This is even more important when what are being washed are not the hands but the dishes, for soapy water may harm the rings. It may actually take the lustre from certain stones; but in any case, a film of soap on the under-surface of a stone deprives the jewel of that glow it is supposed to have and mars the beauty which is the jewel’s excuse for being.
No matter how careful one may be, the ring, worn on the most animated and active part of the body, requires cleaning more often than any other jewel. The ring, as I began by saying, calls attention to the hand which should be well manicured and groomed. But especially the ring should be chosen and worn so that it becomes an effectively contributing part of a woman’s beauty.