Anne Hathaway's Coconut Jelly Nails Are Lacquer, Not a New Gel Technique
The manicure traces to a sheer Essie enamel launched in 2024, while the coconut name came later from nail artist Tom Bachik. Essie had already left Japan, making the look a foreign-market reference rather than a Japanese product launch.
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Anne Hathaway wore short, translucent white nails at the August 9 world premiere of The End of Oak Street. Her nail artist, Tom Bachik, called the manicure Coconut Jelly Gloss and identified the color as Essie's Arctic Jelly. That record establishes a red-carpet manicure and its polish. It does not establish a new nail material, a coconut formulation or a look created for Hathaway's character in the film.
Jelly describes the finish
Essie's current US and UK records classify Arctic Jelly as enamel, not a salon-cured gel. The brand describes it as a sheer, soft white with subtle yellow undertones. Its translucency can be built through additional coats or used over another color. In other words, jelly identifies the optical effect: light passes through layers of pigment instead of meeting the full coverage associated with an opaque white lacquer.
The chronology is also clear. Essie introduced Arctic Jelly in May 2024 as one of nine colors in its Jelly Gloss collection. The company presented the range as polish that could be worn alone, layered or combined with other shades. Bachik's Coconut Jelly Gloss name appeared with Hathaway's 2026 manicure. It is a new name for this particular styling, not the launch name of the product and not evidence of a newly developed technique.
The exact reference changes by market
Arctic Jelly remains in Essie's official US and UK catalogs. Japan has a different distribution history. L'Oreal Japan announced in May 2021 that it would end Essie's Japanese business that year, after selling the brand domestically from 2014. Arctic Jelly therefore arrived more than two years after the announced withdrawal. No official Japanese relaunch was located as of August 12, 2026.
That absence does not mean a translucent white manicure is unavailable in Japan. A salon can produce a visually similar result with another sheer lacquer or gel, and imported bottles may circulate outside an official domestic line. It does mean that identifying Hathaway's bottle is not the same as identifying a current Japanese-market product.
The boundary is uncomplicated: Coconut Jelly Gloss is Bachik's label for a specific celebrity manicure made with a documented 2024 enamel. Its newness lies in the name and the appearance, not in a new gel system or a Japanese launch.
Sources: Essie launch record · Fashionsnap
