Manicure has ancient history that started very long ago. Then it wasn't a process including nail cleaning and care, it was just the way of painting nails, and in different countries people used different ways of doing that.
In Ancient Egypt and China women used henna to color nails. Grant people colored nails red and ordinary people were allowed to have nails of lighter tints. Later Chinese women covered nails silver and gold colors using paints made of wax, egg whites, gelatin and gum-arabic. Except it they wore special nail tips made of gold and silver, these tips were nail shaped and they perfectly emphasized nail length. Long nails were very popular those days, the longer the nails were the higher place their owner took in hierarchy.
Short nails came into fashion much later. It was in America in XIX. Short almond-shaped nails were covered with aroma oil of red color and chamoised. In 1830 European doctor Sitts used orange stick for nail care for the first time. Except it he was the first who started using metal instruments in nail care procedure. This procedure quickly became popular in the USA. By the beginning of ХХ nail care became an important commercial field and “nail care kits”, which included powder, chamois nail file, hand cream and orange stick, were sold in every shop.
The beginning of 20s XX was time of automobile construction. Thus, it was the time of new nail polish colors. In 1925, pink nail polish first came into the market. The middle 20s were called epoch of “moon manicure” as pink nail polish was applied just to the central part of nails and the tips stayed white in the shape moon.
Nail industry has been growing up, more and more nail care products have been being created. Gena laboratory introduced varnish remover, cuticle remover oil. Founders of Revlon Cosmetics, Joseph and Charles Revson, created opaque nail polish based on pigment. It provided a possibility to vary nail polish tints.
Thus, manicure became very popular all over the world. All women wanted to have long and strong nails, but not every woman could afford them naturally. In 50s ХХ they started to use false nails, which were made of different resilient material even of film pieces. Natural nails were used as “tips”. They were stuck to the nail tips and covered with paper pieces.
To be continued…