WHEN she was no more than 10 or 12, Lizzie Jagger liked to paint English landscapes on a set of fake nails that she toted with her everywhere. Her inspirations were whimsical, even rarefied at times.

“I was really into Turner,” recalled Ms. Jagger, who was living in London at that time with her father, Mick, and her mother, Jerry Hall. “ ‘Crossing the Brook,’ was my favorite painting,” she said. “I used bristles cut out of my hairbrush so I could make the work really fine.”

Eventually she abandoned her hobby, partly, she joked, “because I couldn’t see a future in it.”

Oooh, Lizzie, if only you’d had a crystal ball. These days you might find yourself besieged by a veritable army of product developers, all eager to pick your brain for ways to turn nail polish, that once staid cosmetics staple, into a must-have capable of transforming nails into miniaturized canvasses for some of the nerviest experiments that fashion permits.

In recent months, cosmetics makers have invested in lacquers a kind of daring all but unheard of a decade ago, introducing innovations from glitter and crackled surface treatments to stick-on nail art and even scents, and imbuing their products with every color known to nature. And even some that nature would abhor.