Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Black New Yorker nails fashion icon exhibition
Banknotes used for unique designs
IN THE mid-1990s, manicurist Bernadette Thompson was working on a fashion shoot with Lil’ Kim, who was on her way to becoming a hip hop fashion icon and still years away from becoming a jailbird.
It wasn’t the first time she’d worked with the influential rapper, so Thompson was feeling pressure to come up with something new and jaw-dropping – creative enough to compete with the make-up, the hair and the rest.
The shoot was for a denim campaign but Kim was also surfing a wave of enthusiasm for her contribution to the Junior M.A.F.I.A. single Get Money. That became the manicurist’s source of inspiration. She pulled out a dollar bill, cut it into pieces and strategically applied bits of currency to Kim’s acrylic nails to create an eye-popping manicure.
Soon Thompson was upping the flash by using $100 bills. Eventually, the US government sent Thompson a gentle reminder you’re not supposed to deface money, even if it belongs to you. So, Thompson started using fake bills, which were thinner and more flexible and thus easier to apply.
Thompson’s creative flash transformed into a trend. Google “money nails” and an array of currency- adorned talons popped up.
Those nails are part of an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art titled Items: Is Fashion Modern?. The show examines 111 garments and accessories that have had a lasting impact over the past century. They include the little black dress, the pencil skirt, Levi’s jeans, the hoodie, the Wonderbra, stilettos and Converse All-Star sneakers. The idea is to explore the ways in which fashion speaks to politics, culture and identity – the ways in which fashion is woven into our lives, shaping and reflecting who we are.
Thompson’s money nails are one of the few examples of beauty products in the exhibition, which also includes red lipstick and Chanel No 5. They are a rare example of an iconic look that comes directly from the world of black women.
“Black girls always added things to nails, like they added things to clothes,” said Thompson, 48, who is black and grew up in Yonkers, New York.
A manicure “is not super expensive”, she said. “It’s less than a Hermès bag. And you wear it every day.”
It’s a form of pampering, a weekday extension of the pride a woman might find by slipping into her Sunday best and the identity, self-respect and defensive vanity those clothes help provide.
“It was huge in our community. I’m not the first to create nail art. I’ve been around a whole bunch of creative nail artists who are Hispanic, black,” Thompson said. “But I introduced it to fashion.”
In the beginning, the nails were a part of hip hop style, a separate category from mainstream fashion. It was a sensibility that came naturally to Thompson, who got her start working on videos and album covers for Mary J Blige, as well as Kim and Sean Combs.
One of her earliest corporate clients was Louis Vuitton. She painted the nails to match the monogram of the bags.
Today, thanks in large measure to Thompson, manicurists are regularly credited in fashion shoots. And nail art is as common on a European run- way or corporate fashion shoot as it is in a Detroit or Harlem nail salon.
In the meantime, her money nails are at Moma, alongside Calvin Klein briefs, RayBan aviator sunglasses and a Hermès Birkin bag. These things are modern because they tell us something about the aesthetics that animate us. They transcend tradition, rewrite rules.
Thompson’s nail art scrambled assumptions about femininity, beauty and class. Those issues remain at the centre of cultural dialogue. Thompson’s work is modern. And will be for the foreseeable future. – Washington Post