The history of nail polish
77The idea of colouring your nails is an old one; the ancient Egyptians stained their nails with henna, and the ancient Japanese and Chinese also stained the nails with various herbal extracts.
Modern nail varnish was invented in the 1920's. Charles Revson formed the Charles Revson company with his brother Martin Revson and Charles Lachman, a chemist.
They employed a French make-up artist, Michelle Renard, who wondered if the new technology used for painting cars could be used to make an enamel for the nails. The revolution in thinking was to abandon staining the actual nail, but instead to paint a hard-wearing enamel on top of it. She managed to create a modern lacquer made of the same nitrocellulose disolved in solvent, that was used on cars (except not the same strength).
Charles Revson and his colleagues thought the idea had market potential and set up a factory to manufacture it. Because their nail varnish was created from hard-wearing chemicals rather than from herbs, it had the advantage that it was easy to store and keep - as long as the bottle was sealed and the solvent could not evaporate, the varnish was as good as the day it was created.
The Charles Revson company became Revlon (they added the L in the middle of the name for the other co-founder Lachman). The first Revlon nail polish went on sale in 1932. It initially sold in hair and beauty salons, and was then marketed in department stores and drug stores.
It was Hollywood that made the new nail polish big. Colour movies had just arrived, and audiences could see their favourite actresses wearing the exotic reds and mauves of the Revlon company, and they searched out the product in the shops. It helped that it was relatively cheap as far as make-up goes. Painting your nails and buying the matching lipstick gave you a bit of Hollywood glamour even if your clothes were cheap. Other cosmetic houses soon followed and added nail polish to their ranges too.
The formula for nail polish remains similar to the one invented by Michelle Menard some 80 years ago. It's been amended a bit to make it longer lasting and to make it dry quicker, but essentially it's the same nitro-cellulose suspended in solvent.
The innovations have been mainly in the field of colour. When nail polish first came out, the fashion was to match your nails and lipstick, and because lipstick tended to be red or pink, nails were red or pink too. In the 1960's clear nail polish came in, to give a natural look that complemented the nude lipsticks that were in fashion then. But it wasn't till the late 1990's that cosmetic companies abandoned the idea of matching lips and nails and started producing blue nail polish, green nail polish and a host of other exotic colours - gold, silver, black, neon and so on. Just like the car enamels that inspired nail polish, you can have any colour you want.
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An interesting read!
Nice story
I just came by to see some of your other hubs and I see we may have more than the 60daychallenge in common. Take a look at one of mine for it is about nail polish! We should link them up together ;)
THANK YOU! This helped me out alot!We had to do a project and you had to pick something invented and say EVERYTHING about it and every one had REALLY good ideas and i picked the one thing a loved NAIL POLISH which is stupid to write about in science BUT this TOTALY helped back it up!
im doing a report about nailpolish and it is really good info!
this is really good info. i have to do a demonstrative speech for one of my classes and i chose how to paint someoneo's nails and put designs on them. However, the teacher said that i neede to give some sort of brief history. so thanks!!!!!!!!
you helped me a lot in my science fair
Green, blue, yellow and just about any colour nail polish was available well b4 the 90's, as a matter of fact! I used to get told off at the first year of high school in the early 80's for wearing my favorite blue. I would buy it from chelsea, kensington markets and from the massive top shop at Oxford Circus.
Yeah I'm pretty sure I remember painting my nails multiple colors before the late 90's.
I'm doing a biography, and histosy research paper. This really helped my research go further. Thank you!!
Im using this for research so i hope it works and helps me
i hope this is right or im dead :S so i hope u know wat ur talking about !!
its really intresting n helps us in getting infmtn
I actually had blue, green & yellow polish in the early 1970's. So they were manufactured prior to the 1990's, just not popular
im doin a science project too and i needed info and "voila!" i find it.thnx!!!!!!
my science fair project is on nail polish! this helped a lot. thank you!
this is so what i needed for my social studies fair!!!i cant wait to tell Demi about this!!!!!she is going to b like sooooo thrilled
this really helped me in my socialology class as in expeirementing on the fabulos and reconveinent nail varnish as we say in proper terms
I know I've seen black nail polish from the 1940s, and yellows and greens from the 1960s, so that's pretty far off, but otherwise, great info!
nice story
Thank you you really helped me with my homework!!!!!!!!
Thanks
I had dark, bright green and blue nail varnish in the 1970's - I often used Mary Quant and Biba makeup.
I like how everyone is doing a project on nail polish. I am too!! thanks- this is great infer. pretty sure I'm ready to right my speech now :)
and I hate auto corrections: *info *write
thanks ill be using this on my science fair project. thanks what about sally henson and sinful colors?
I had to do a speech on nail polish and this gave me everything I needed to know!!
cashmere Level 4 Commenter 2 years ago
really interesting read. see how fashion comes out of car paint!