Everyone is beyond excited at the announcement that the amazing British designer, Gareth Pugh, is collaborating with Nailympia and the brand new category, Runway Nails!

As I’ve worked with him for years and have played a part in creating the category with Alex Fox, Elaine Watson and Janine Derbyshire, I thought it may be useful to give competitors some ideas as this has never been done before (to my knowledge). Also, I’d like to show that it is fun and encourage those that are undecided to give it a go!

Nail teams are part of every fashion show, globally! It’s where beauty ‘trends’ usually start and every cosmetics brand will keep a look out for the emergence of new colours. So many colour cosmetics brands refer to where colours were seen on the catwalk. It’s now a very definite career route for nail technicians who may just want to dip into it a couple of times a year or make the whole ‘sessions thing’ a career move.

Nailympia London has tried to make this category as realistic as possible and we even have a real international designer (who loves nails) to provide the brief. This is exactly what happens for many real fashion shows.

Gareth has provided his brief in exactly the same way that he does for all his shows. i.e. a verbal brief together with a ‘moodboard’ of his inspirations and a ‘feel’ for what his ‘woman’ needs to be. He has specifically asked that every competitor brings their own creativity to complete his ‘woman’ based on his brief. In order to do this with any
degree of thought and planning, he has asked that every competitor has a copy of the brief before the competition so they can research and carefully consider his thoughts.

All competitors will now have the opportunity to think about their submissions plus get the verbal brief translated into the relevant language.

Every competitor will be provided with the ‘brief’ 10 days in advance and 3 long, square nail tips at the competition. There will then be 1 hour to design 3 different nails as a personal interpretation of the brief. These 3 nails will need to be mounted on a card (or similar) with a little description of how and why the design was achieved. (The category rules and judging criteria is available on the Scratch/Nailympia London FB page)

Hints:
The nails can be any length and shape but I suggest you look at the silhouette of the images on the mood board
The colours and textures need to relate to fabrics
The designs are on nail tips so any non-cosmetic materials can be used
Bring a small quantity of a wide range of materials alongside nail colours (there is only 1 nail of each design to be made so only tiny quantities will be needed)
Bear in mind that the nails need to look good close up (backstage media photography) and from a distance (on the catwalk)
Take into account the ease of making the design in very large numbers!
Very often ‘less is more’ to be effective and feasible so keep this in mind
The timing is realistic as several ideas need to be shown in a short space of time. If they take too long to create making large numbers of them will not be practical
Bring something to hold the nail tips while they are being created
Bring something to mount the finished nails on. This can be a simple as a piece of white card or more elaborate. Blue Tac is the easiest to mount the nails on the card
Bring pens so the description of the designs can be added to the card. This only needs to be brief but the judges will want to know how competitors arrived at the designs both with reference to the brief and materials used
There is enough time so I would recommend a bit of research on the designer. Gareth’s style is very specific so that will provide a good start with ideas. There are also a lot of images of ‘Gareth Pugh nails’ on the internet so that is another source of ideas (and what NOT to repeat!)
Gareth has provided a very specific ‘mood’ for his woman! He likes ‘extreme’ and a design that is usual and surprising! Definitely nothing to do with ‘salon’ or commercial nails

It’s going to be a LOT of fun and not so difficult! It could be a good place for dipping into competitions too. It’s only 3 nails and only 1 hour!!!

Good luck to everyone who enters! See you there…