For now I’d like to touch upon budgeting. Setting yourself a budget before getting too deeply involved in your shopping online is one of the best pieces of advice we can give. It’s very important to do this, because it’s all too easy to get carried away and choosing a product that offers those little extra features but spending a lot more than we could or should have spent. Above: 1953 Counter display for Cutex Red Hot ’n Blue shade promotion with non-competitive product tie-ins: Chlorodent Toothpaste, Lady Esther Four Purpose Cream, Lilt Home Permanent, Maybelline Make-up, Pacquin’s Silk ’n Satin Lotion, and Prell Radiant Shampoo. Chesebrough-Pond’s

Above: Cutex Nail Polish Bottles with colour inserts and Oily Polish Remover designed by Donald Deskey [1894-1989]. Above: 1932 Cutex Club Kit. A complete set of manicure preparations in a leather case with bottles topped with Bakelite caps.

Cutex Cuticle Eraser is a 2-in-1 treatment not only exfoliates but also moisturises dry, damaged cuticles.

The actual price of the product that you choose is of course one of the most vital aspects of choosing the right product, we will go into that in more detail in just a moment. Cutex Exotic Pearl Nail Polish in Orange Blaze, Jamaica Green, Tahiti Orchid and Coral Sand shades.Notice how true this is when you brush a gleaming film of Cutex Polish over your own oval nails. There’s a swift little whiff of the clean distinctive odor you have always associated with an efficient polish. It lasts just long enough to accomplish its task. Then—it’s gone! First, file your nails to the proper length and shape. The best professional manicurists say that it is now considered good form to give the nail an oval shape—that is, to have it conform to the shape of the finger tip, and to have the nail reach just to the top of the finger. Beginning in 1938, Northam Warren also paid a number of French designers to endorse some of these shades in the hope that this would link Cutex shades with Paris fashions and give them a greater cachet. No odor of any kind lingers! No alien perfume to contend with … and perhaps destroy … your own exclusive scent. Just a sparking crystal film … sparking and unscented.

In 1916, the company introduced a clear, liquid nail polish it referred to as a Nail Enamel or Nail Polish. The following year it added a rose-tinted form and, by 1921, both products were described as nail polishes or liquid polishes. In 1930, following the move to darker nail polishes in Europe, three new shades were added: Coral, a red pink; Cardinal, a flame red; and Garnet, a red-lily red. This bought the total number of Cutex Liquid Polish shades to six, with a seventh shade, Ruby, a red red, added in 1933. All of these shades were created with dyes, so were somewhat transparent.

Above: “Then the polish—spread it on the soft part of the hand and burnish by brushing the nails lightly across it. To apply the liquid, coat each nail lightly with the little camel’s hair brush that comes in the box.” Above: 1934 Cutex Color Selector counter display. The base was moulded plastic, surmounted by a finger rest. Over the finger rest was a disk which contained transparent nail shaped sections of the six Cutex colours – the Clear shade not being included. By pushing a button on the rest and rotating the disk, the customer could see how each shade looked on their finger. Cutex also generated interest in the liquid polish by altering the manicure instructions that came with its other products so that they now included the use of the liquid polish. The example below is from 1926.

The first coloured Cutex Nail Polish, later referred to as a Natural (i.e., light pink) shade, was probably tinted with a soluble dye like carmoisine or safranine. A deeper tint called Deep Rose was introduced in 1925. In 1928, the company also began selling its Clear (colourless) polish with a separate bottle of tint to enable colour to be added by personal preference, a reflection of the conservative nature of many Cutex customers. Natural goes with all costumes but best with bright colors—red, blue, bright green, purple, orange, yellow. Above: 1938 Designer endorsements from Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973), Alix Barton (1903-1993), Lucien Lelong (1889-1958) and Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1946). Thanks for visiting to read our Cutex Hydrating Cuticle Oil review. We’ve got a whole load of products in the Manicure and pedicure tools category to compare against, but for now let’s take a look at what’s so good about Cutex Hydrating Cuticle Oil to make it worthy of an overall score of 8.4 out of 10. Massage the oil into your cuticles. Make sure to massage it into the sides of your nail, as well as the skin surrounding your nail. Take a minute to massage the oil into your nails to induce blood circulation.Above: “First shape the nails with a steel file holding the file loosely and working upward from the sides to the centre. Then smooth off all remaining roughness with an emery board.” Price is then of course the second part of this tip, and the advice here is to take the time to really study the price of Cutex Hydrating Cuticle Oil against other products in the Manicure and pedicure tools category. To help you with that, we’ve run some analysis for you. Cutex along with other Northam Warren brands – such as Galzo, Odorono and Peggy Sage – were sold to Chesebrough-Pond’s on December 30, 1960 but the new owners were unable to do much to improve the fortunes of Cutex nor did Unilever which acquired Chesebrough-Pond’s in 1986. This article was co-authored by Lindsay Yoshitomi. Lindsay Yoshitomi is the nail artist behind the blog, Lacquered Lawyer. She was featured as one of Nail It! magazine’s “Bloggers You Should Know,” and has been on the cover of Nail Art Gallery Magazine. She has been practicing nail art for over 15 years.