Manicurist Jin Soon Choi is a regular at New York Fashion Week, and she's among my favorite faces to spot backstage. She's also one of the warmest people you'll ever meet, and she creates some of the coolest nail looks, custom blending polishes to get the perfect shade and finish. And while we can't hang out with Jin Soon all the time, we can finally bring home some of her previously inimitable style: Her new line of 12 polishes is available now at SpaceNK and arrives at Sephora later this week. She took a break from manicuring models at the Theyskens' Theory spring/summer 2013 show to chat with me about the collection.

What inspired your line?

I tried to express timelessness and trendiness at the same time with the two different collections, Quintessential and A La Mode. There are classic shades like red and nude, but we also wanted to have a little bit more color with A La Mode. I feel like they're edited really well.

Who named the polishes?

I named the Quintessential shades with my husband, and models named all the nail colors in the A La Mode collection. Caroline [Trentini] named Austere, Rhapsody came from Coco [Rocha], Debonair from Karlie [Kloss], Metaphor from Guinevere [Van Seenus], Charade from Hyoni [Kang], and Auspicious from Jamie Bochert.

What look were you going for at Theyskens' Theory?

We wanted to create our version of a modern sheer—not just a pink sheer, because then it's expected. This is modern, clean, and kind of space-y, but still very gentle and soft.

Which colors did you use?

We used Muse, a sheer, glassy light pink from Quintessential for the first coat. Then we put a coat of Auspicious, a gray, on top of that. Olivier [Theyskens] wanted the nails to have a fresh, glow-y feeling.