The nail olympics: An unvarnished look at Britain's most bizarre contest
David Wilkes
24th September 2010
The tension is palpable inside the packed arena. At stake is not just personal honour, but national pride, too. Team-mates huddle together as they psych themselves up before each demanding category, their faces wracked with concentration. Some 354 competitors from 24 countries are here, record numbers, and they’ve been in training for years to claw their way up the rankings.
‘This is one of the most important competitions in the world. You come to demonstrate your skill and show what your country can offer,’ says Carmelina Gandolfo, 32, from the Italian team, summing up the sense of occasion. 'There is rivalry because everyone thinks he is the king. It’s normal. People don’t speak to each other before the event and there a lot of nerves. But afterwards, we are friends and talk.’
Welcome to Nailympics 2010, the self-styled ‘Olympic Games of fake nails’. Here, once a year, the world’s top manicurists battle it out for medals in gruelling events such as ‘fibreglass tip and overlay’, ‘gel sculpture’ and ‘fantasy nail art’.
Exotic fingernails first came to most people’s attention in the 1980s via the world-record breaking sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, better known as Flo-Jo. The late U.S. athlete sported 6in talons, and at the 1988 Olympics she patriotically painted them red, white, blue — and gold to signify her goal. At its most basic level today, nail art involves glueing artificial acrylic pieces onto natural nails and then painting them. More exotic methods of decoration include airbrushing the acrylic nails and embedding them with tiny gems or trinkets.
This is what the ‘fantasy nail art’ category is all about at the Nailympics, and it’s an undoubted crowd-pleaser — an explosion of creative madness where artists build whole scenes on their models’ fingers. Fairies, forests and angels are favourite designs, but some cute Beatrix Potter characters also put in an appearance this year.
They all look a bit bonkers to the uninitiated and are, by any measure, totally impractical. Not only are the lovingly crafted figurines so fragile you would knock them off in seconds if you tried to wash the dishes, but you also risk electrocution with some of the more elaborate designs, which feature flashing lights and revolving pagodas discreetly wired up to batteries strapped to the wrist. But according to the organisers, the techniques involved in making these amazing flights of fancy ‘feed down to everyday nails’, so it’s not really that silly at all.
‘It may look ridiculous,’ one judge explained, ‘but no more so than some of the clothes you would see at a high fashion show in Paris. It displays a mastery of the nail technician’s craft.’ In comparison, most of the other disciplines, while undoubtedly also requiring great skill and artistic flair, are not particularly enthralling as spectator sports.
The competitors sit hunched over desks, building and painting perfect, long nails. A miniature flag denoting the competitor’s country stands on each desk so you know who to cheer for. They work with an array of liquids, powders and paints which fill the air with pungent chemical aromas (some competitors even wear paper masks over their mouths and noses). They compete not just against each other but also against strict time limits.
Few people outside the nail industry — apart from the busloads of visiting student beauticians — have heard of Nailympics, but this is its sixth year. It’s gaining in popularity all the time, and this year was part of the Olympia Beauty Show at London’s Earls Court, which attracted 30,000 visitors. The industry is now worth an estimated £50million a year, and nail technicians can subscribe to their very own dedicated magazine called Scratch.
www.scratchmagazine.co.uk
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"I've always fancied a giraffe on the end of my finger... "
Get out ya freak!
