What I would really like to know is when all this nail polish stuff started. Origins and all that.
Nail polish originated in China, dating back to 3000 BC. Around 600 BC during the Zhou Dynasty, the royal house had a preference for the colors gold and silver. However, it would eventually transition to red and black. During the Ming Dynasty, nail polish was often made from a mixture of egg whites, beeswax, Arabic gum and flower petals to create a pigment that they would soak their nails in for hours to reach a desirable effect.
In Egypt, the lower classes would wear pale colors and the high society red.
By the turn of the 9th century, nails were tinted with scented red oils, and polished or buffed. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people pursued a polished rather than painted look by massaging tinted powders and creams into their nails, then buffing them shiny. One such polishing product sold around this time was Graf's Hyglo nail polish paste. After the creation of automobile paint, Cutex produced the first modern nail polish in 1917. Later the Charles Revson Company (later Revlon) produced their first nail polish in 1932.
Once nail polish was refined, it was often used in the place of gloves to cover up the grime underneath finger and toe nails.
