FOOT CARE JOURNAL 16
Nail Care Has
a Longer History Than You Think
Tidying the nails feels like the most modern of rituals. Follow its roots, though, and you end up somewhere unexpected: at the feet.
The story usually told goes like this. In the 1830s, a European foot doctor borrowed an instrument from dentistry and adapted it for nail care. That idea is said to be the starting point for many of the tools still used today.
From there, the craft crossed the Atlantic. By the late nineteenth century, manicure parlors were opening in New York, and nail care slowly became something you could book, not just something you did at home.
The little wooden stick
The slim orangewood stick still used to gently push back cuticles is often traced to that same moment, when a dental idea was reshaped for nails. Some of the simplest tools in a manicure have the longest stories.
Go back further, and nails carried meaning long before they carried polish. In ancient Egypt and China, well-kept or colored nails are said to have signaled rank, and a life with time to spare.
In other words, tending to the nails has been a little special for far longer than we tend to think. And the charming part is that the story begins not at the fingertips, but at the feet.
Today, gel manicures and pedicures are an easy pleasure. Knowing a little of the background can make the usual hour in the chair feel a touch different.
Then as now, caring for hands and feet is one of life’s small luxuries.
A small luxury, with a long history.
At Colors Hiroo Nail Lounge, foot care is a treatment of its own, never an afterthought. Over the years, we have kept refining how we care for callused skin and heels.
It can be done in the same visit as your gel manicure or pedicure: an unhurried hour in a modern Japanese house, two minutes’ walk from Hiroo Station.
Reservations are made through Hot Pepper Beauty, an external Japanese booking site. English-language plan details are listed further down that page; please scroll down to find them.
Colors Hiroo Nail Lounge
5-3-8 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku,
Tokyo
Mon–Fri 10:00–21:00
Sat, Sun & Holidays 11:00–20:00