But at the end of every shoot, those beautiful models, who make careers out of looking perfect, have become so attached to their long nails that they reconsider and leave them on.
Many people, these models included, don't realize how good (and how natural) well-sculpted acrylics can look. It's too bad we can't convince them prior to the shoot that they will love their nails - they won't believe it until they see it.
We will comply if a model wants her nails off, but during the past year, not one has wanted them off when it was all over. Because nails for the photo shoot have to last only a few hours, our cover technicians will use techniques to minimize any possible damage to the natural nail. They don't usually prime and they don't rough the natural nail at all. Nadine Galli, who did the nails for next month's cover, put a dab of Vaseline on the model's nails before sculpting the acrylics so that they'd be easy to remove. Our cover model, who insisted that she be able to remove the nails, was awfully disappointed when the shoot was over and her nails popped right off.
This month's cover model had another modeling job immediately after she posed for us, so she warned cover technician Paula Gilmore that the nails would have to come off. Paula brought everything she needed to remove the long nails quickly, but when the model got a look at those flawlessly sculpted, naturally thin, perfectly shaped nails, she decided to leave them on.
What's the moral of the story? Artificial nails may have a bad rap with a lot of potential clients, but there's no one you can't turn around with a set of perfectly sculpted nails. We've convinced some of the pickiest clients in California.