Ever wonder what shade of polish goes best with magenta hair? Well, wonder no more. Ever-stylish hoopster Dennis Rodman looks fine in the metallic midnight blue he selected to wear to an L.A. fund-raiser promoting California AIDS Ride 3 (People, October 16, 1995). Sexy screen star Antonio Banderas, on the other hand, looks fine in anything — even the chipped, dark toe polish he models in the October 6,1995, issue of Entertainment Weekly. Do you think girlfriend Melanie Griffith had a hand in his fashion statement? Matching lips and nails looks dated, says October’s Marie Claire. According to Denise Chaplin of New York’s Frederic Fekkai Salon, “For the best modern look, keep nails short and well-groomed — French-mani­cured, buffed, or polished a natural shade. Then go for a stronger lip color on your mouth.”

Allure TACKLES NAIL TRIVIA. The average woman produces 1,196 inches of fingernails in a lifetime. But you would already know that if you had read Allure’s October feature “Statistical Nails.” “Nails have been elevated to the stature of hair, with their own salons on every other city street comer,” writes editor Jeannie Ralston in her introduction. We appreciate Allure’s effort to unearth some pretty interesting facts about nails (many taken from NAILS’ annual Fact Book) in their four-page article. Among them:

• The number of minutes firefighters and police officers in Newton, Mass., spent trying to free a woman whose fingernail got stuck in the coin slot of a parking meter: 15.

• The percentage of women who use a nail file on an average weekday morning within the first hour of waking up: 21.

• The percentage of women who have health concerns about the equipment used in professional salon manicures: 28.5.

• The amount of money Barbra Streisand impersonator Steven Brinberg has spent on press-on nails in the past 18 months: $312.