Perfect Polish
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday April 20, 1988
IN the wake of the enormous popularity of fake fingernails, a new fashion is emerging - the natural-looking nail. Blunt-shaped nails painted in the palest of colours are this season's latest look.
But before you throw out your manicure set, or cancel your next appointment with the beauty salon, be warned that the effect is not achieved by leaving your nails au naturel.
Style visited four manicurists around Sydney and found out what they did to make one's nails look natural.
The first we visited was Madame Korner in the City - part of the old guard of Sydney's beauty salons.
For this, the first of my manicures, every experience was a new one. According to the manicurist, my rather ordinary-looking nails were in dire need of some serious treatment.
The first thing we did was to choose the nail polish. I chose a pale coral colour, because my nails weren't very long and I was advised that strong colours make your nails look shorter than paler colours - as it turned out, my instincts were, if you like, fashionably correct, but I didn't know that at the time.
However, I goofed on the next step, by asking that my nails be filed in a round shape rather than the more contemporary style of her own, straighter nails.
The manicurist then asked if I wanted to cut all my nails to the length of the shortest, or keep the longer nails and ignore the fact that two of my nails were broken. Like most of her customers, I chose the latter.
Once she had stripped my nails of polish, she applied a gel and put my hands into water to soak - this apparently removes any dead skin on the nails and at the cuticles.
Five minutes later she returned and began pushing the cuticles back with a flat-edged wooden stick covered in twisted cotton wool.
She then took a pair of nail clippers to the cuticles, and to any stray bits of skin around the nail. Because my nails, as she delicately hinted, were rather unkept, the manicurist was quite generous in her removal of the cuticle edge, which she said was more prominent than if I had had regular manicures. She claimed that having long cuticles retards the growth of the nail. Frankly, I thought the process was rather disgusting and you would practically need a microscope to see the difference it made.
The manicurist then set to and mended a nail that was beginning to break, but which she felt she could save from being cut off. With glue and a papery substance she bonded the nail together and, when the glue was dried, she buffed it ready to paint.
Next she put on a base coat to prevent the nails yellowing, followed by two coats of the coral pink varnish. This was rather gluggy, so it didn't go on very smoothly, even after the second coat.
When the paint was touch dry, she sprayed my nails with an aerosol varnish dryer, which she said would help it dry more quickly.
Probably because the polish was so gluggy, the result was not perfect, but it did look quite smart. It seemed somehow reassuring to know that my cuticles were now in good health, even if I couldn't see the difference.
The cost was only $12 and, although I had cheaper manicures, this, my first manicure, was the longest and seemed good value.
At Myrria-Kate Beauty Therapists at Brighton-le-Sands, and at all the other manicurists, my experiences with Mme Korner were repeated, but with some differences.
The first thing that struck me at Myrria-Kate's was the limited choice of nail polish: they all appeared to be either orange, dark red, or contained gold or frost.
Despite having had my nails done only a few days previously at Mme Korner's, the manicurist busied herself with the task of "restoring" my nails
She chided me for trimming the top of the cuticles (done at Mme Korner) and set to gouging out any stray skin on the sides of the nail, avoiding the tops of the nails because she said it weakened them.
She also mended the broken nail again with an acrylic mix painted on to the end of the nail.
The polish went on a little unevenly and the finish was a little mucky -other people commented on the fact that the manicurist hadn't gone right to the edge of the nail.
The next place we visited was the manicurist in Margaret Williams, the upmarket hairdresser in Woollahra.
Margaret Williams's manicurist only had a few colours, too, but at least less of them were either frosted or gold spangled.
Here again, the emphasis was on straight, pale nails, which are whitened underneath if they are long enough for what is called "the French Look".
By the time I got to this manicurist, my broken nail was long enough to be cut off, so fortunately we had none of the tedious business of patching this time.
Nor did I have my cuticles raped and pillaged and, for the first time, I was told that my cuticles were in good nick.
The manicure cost $14 and will probably go up to $15 soon, which the manicurist said is the going rate in the area.
At Julie's Beauty Therapist and Body Care in Ashfield I was not overly inspired with the choice of nail polishes available, either.
Fortunately I had taken my own (a cast-off from the fashion editor after a shoot), a YSL of the palest, clear pink, which looks very pretty but, as I discovered, chips almost as soon as it goes on.
As Julie had been trained at Mme Korner, she was very keen on heavy pruning of my cuticles and trimming across the top, which I discouraged her from doing. At only $8, this manicure was a bargain.
So how necessary is all this treatment? Not very, according to dermatologist Dr Lewsbe Abbott, who explained there is no scientific reason why we should trim the cuticles; the nail grows from a point underneath the nail fold and the cuticle is only an extention of the nail fold.
Nor does polish have any effect on the nail.
"The nail is one of the toughest things in the world. You can put it in acid or anything. All the polish does is sit on the top of the nail," he said
He said the shape does not have much of an effect, either - the only thing which really affects nails is water, particularly hot water, which apparently makes them soft and vulnerable to damage.
Sadly, he said, the difference between thick and thin nails is related to our protein chemistry and therefore probably a genetic thing.
Dr Abbott's advice on how to take care of your nails is to trim them properly, give them a buff to make them shiny, but otherwise they'll look after themselves.
Therefore, five days after all these manicures, I went home and cut all my fingernails to a level just below my finger top, set to with the polish remover, and filed them to a vaguely rounded shape.
© 1988 Sydney Morning Herald
