John Shearer/Getty ImagesForget about telling freshly-minted Grammy winner Adele to break a leg. It's more like, go break a nail.
Great Britain's "Chasing Pavements" hitmaker left people wondering what was up with the big white bandage wrapped around her right thumb during her performance of "Cracklin' Rosie" at this weekend's MusiCares tribute to Neil Diamond.
The reason ain't pretty.
"I ripped my nail off," the Best New Artist told me yesterday at the Grammys. "I had fake nails on and I was having a tickling fight and it bent back and ripped my nail underneath off."
She said the bandage made it look worse than it was.
"It was a bit exaggerated," she said with a laugh. "It was so I was more aware of my thumb and not to keep knocking it and hurting it."
Smartly, she ditched the bandage yesterday for a more simple—and less visible—Band-Aid, which went much better with her Anna Wintour-styled Grammys ensemble. (Yes, the legendary Vogue editor styled Adele!)
Wintour commissioned Barbara Tfank to design Adele's black dress about a month ago. "Adele came to my office," Tfank told me this morning. "We sat down at a table and I said, tell me about when you're onstage and how you like to feel and how you like to look. She had this very cool beehive hair from the night before and that inspired me, too."
Tfank, who also worked closely with one of Vogue's top deputies Hamish Bowles on the dress, hopes Wintour's embrace of Adele signals a greater acceptance of women of all shapes and sizes. Tfank said, "I think we're finally coming to a better place of realizing that not all people are alike."