This Instagram Star and Nail Artist Just Turned “Slime Green” Polish Into a Spring Trend

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Madeline Poole, a nail artist and Sally Hansen’s global color ambassador, has distilled her eclectic palette into a six-polish capsule collection.Photo: Courtesy of Madeline Poole / @mpnails

Last fall, when Madeline Poole dyed her hair a shade of fluoro-canteloupe, the nail artist had an unlikely reference in mind: “A Troll doll. Literally a Troll doll,” she deadpans. That knack for zeitgeist-y allusion, coupled with an unbridled color sensibility, has earned her street cred for her graphic nail designs and eclectic wardrobe (“I’m a huge enthusiast of brights,” she says, beaming). As for her latest exercise in nostalgia-as-palette? It lands this month in the form of her first-ever Sally Hansen capsule, with six polishes that rewire ’90s flash points for right now.

Poole’s shade names have a familiar ring, like Mallratz (deep forest green) and Material Pearl (shimmering pink).Photo: Courtesy of Madeline Poole

Take Slime Scene—an outré chartreuse that is bound to trigger some knee-jerk reactions. “There was a little hesitation with that color: Is anybody going to buy this one, because it’s so kind of creepy?” Poole says with a laugh, recalling internal discussions. But as the brand’s global color ambassador for the past few years, advising on campaign images and new launches, the nail artist knew it was a sleeper hit. For one, this is not a shade you’ll stumble across in a drugstore. Then there’s the throwback to her childhood: “There was a kind of slime obsession at that time, like Gak and Silly Putty and Ghostbusters.” The DIY slime recipes now making the birthday party circuit only cement the revival.

“I was feeling for a time when color was more abundant and appreciated,” Poole says of the overarching idea for the collection, which had her daydreaming about her mother’s saturated wardrobe in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Say It Lycra Mean It, a vivid orange-red, conjures up a high-cut leotard in traffic-stopping neon. Mallratz, a forest green, riffs on the 1995 slacker hit that cycled through Poole’s VCR. There’s a down-tempo palette cleanser by way of Vinyl Tap, a cool opaque gray fit for record store habitués. And two sheer polishes cap off the group: Material Pearl, a shimmering pink, and Call Me on My Shellphone. “Drake has nothing to do with that time period,” she admits, “but cell phones do!” At least the shoebox-size ones carried by Zack Morris on Saved By the Bell.

The collection’s one-off packaging nods to the polishes inside—and hints at a design project Poole plans to launch later this spring.Photo: Courtesy of Madeline Poole / @realmp

Even Poole’s lo-fi color-development process hits a ’90s nerve. Much like Hard Candy—the cult polish line launched in 1995, with hard-to-find shades originally blended in a kitchen sink—this new collection was born out of old-school tinkering. For Lycra, she started with an empty bottle; added a base of red, orange, and a touch of white; and handed it off to the lab with the prompt: “Okay, do something like this!” She is just as hands-on with the design, from the customized bottle tops (with her M.P. signature font) to the color-blocked wrapping and PVC sacks she designed for press samples, part of a mission to “make the packaging as reusable as possible”—not to mention Instagram friendly. The bag isn’t for sale, but there’s a consolation prize for fans: Poole is set to launch a line of her own accessories—bags, earrings, shirts—later this spring. Will there be transparent items in the mix? “There’s a whole lot of that,” she says with a smile. “It’s easy! It goes with everything.” Slime Scene included.

The Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Madeline Poole Collection launches this month, with each shade about $8; sallyhansen.com