History I Never Knew - The Origin of Nail Polish

Get out your fourth-grade history books, boys and girls. Who were the first people to wear nail polish?

If you answered “The Ancient Babylonians,” you’d be correct. Archaeologists working the tombs of Babylonian soldiers from around 3,200 B.C.E. discovered manicure kits among the soldiers’ battle gear. They’d stain their nails with green and black kohl, thinking that the sight of this war paint would scare their foes.

Not long after that, around 3,000 B.C.E., aristocratic women in China would soak their nails overnight in a mixture of beeswax, egg white, gum arabic and gelatin. They added dyes from orchids and roses to get a variety of colors.
Starting around 600 B.C.E. in China, very long, bejeweled nails came into fashion. Having them meant you had big bucks and didn’t need to do hard labor.

Cleopatra got into the game around 50 B.C.E. She dyed her nails blood-red with plant extracts. Queen Nefertiti, who came before her in Egypt, made henna dyeing of the hands popular. Cleo was one of the first to color just the nails rather than the entire hand.

Fast forward to Paris in the 1870s, where the first commercial nail salons opened and catered to both men and women. They cleaned the nails with powder, tinted oils and creams, then buffed them to a shine. That was the first incidence of “nail polish.” Before that, in the 1830s, King Louis’ manicurist designed the first nail file from a dental tool.

Mary Cobb opened up America’s first manicure parlor in New York in 1878. An energetic entrepreneur, she got a divorce, reverted to her maiden name, designed a line of products, and wrote the first manual for doing your nails at home. She had a monopoly on both emery boards and pink and red nail polish.

Cutex made the first modern liquid nail polish in 1917. It was nitrocellulose, the same stuff used to make car paint and motion picture film. During the Depression, Cutex was an affordable luxury, selling for 35 cents.

In 1932, Revlon made many more tints available when it started using pigments rather than dyes in its nail polishes. Flappers loved it and took to the “moon manicure,” which involved painting the middle of the nail and leaving bare crescents at the tip and the base.

The first fake nail was made in 1976 by dentist Fred Slack. He broke a nail at work and repaired it with aluminum foil and dental acrylic from his lab. He and his brother Tom subsequently patented the first acrylic nail extension.

And finally, in 2003, an American company created “Pawlish,” a line of nail lacquer for dogs. That idea didn’t fly – groomers found little demand for “pet-i-cures.”

That’s today’s history lesson, courtesy of Mental Floss magazine. And now you know the rest of the story about feminine beauty – always a favorite topic!