This is the dawn of the age of ugly beauty. In the last year, we’ve fallen in love with rodent men, followed ‘sad girl’ and ‘sunburnt’ (not sunkissed!) makeup tutorials, eye-witnessed Doja Cat’s runny mascara at the Met Gala, and were both captivated and creeped out by the body-warping fashion of Michaela Stark. Nail art in this genre is not falling short, with particularly unseemly specimens resembling anything from gnarly nail fungus to went-digging-with-your-dog-in-dirt.
Lifelong Berliner Camilla Inge Volbert specialises in these delightfully disconcerting, outrageously over-the-top manis. Her work is in demand: the kitschy Y2K-inspired sets and eerily real-looking mini sculptures, like her pickle nails and cigarette buds, have drawn collabs with Bauhaus Archiv, Hugo Boss, Zalando and Balenciaga, and appeared in publications like Missy Magazine, Dazed, SLEEK, Gay Times and SZ Magazin. We asked the 28-year-old: is this the end of beauty as we know it?
Let’s hear about your nails first. Why are they different on both hands?
I keep this hand [right] a little bit shorter, so I can wear gloves. But I do love really long nails, so on my left hand I go all out. These were my vacation nails, so I have a little duck with a swimming ring. And the other ones are emo-inspired, which reminds me a lot of my aesthetic when I was 13.
What’s going on with that cone shape on the emo hand?
Duck nails – this is actually something that was popular in the 90s and 2000s, and originally it was a fail. When you’d go to the nail salon, sometimes they wouldn’t be able to do a very straight square shape, so it flared out a little. And then people started to actually like that shape, and it became more and more extreme. They’re very fun because you have so much more space to do stuff on them, even if they’re short.
Has your nail art always been this… creative?
I started doing nails around five and a half years ago. Because I was studying fashion design, I started doing nails for people’s unique projects very early on, experimenting with stuff that’s more out there. The possibilities have grown with my skill set and level, but I think I’ve done weird things from the beginning.
How do you come up with things like pigeon toes or cat claw nails?
Someone came to me and said they were going to be a pigeon for a performance. We talked through what could be possible, what their movements were and what feeling they wanted to evoke. It’s almost like you’re doing a costume for the hands. And the cat claws are kind of obvious, aren’t they? They’re close to nails already. Especially because people always make comments about how your nails look like claws, how you’re like a cat or whatever. So, you know, why not be a proper cat?
I’m a bit scared of the answer, but what’s the most outrageous design you’ve unleashed onto the world so far?
One that got a lot of attention was the set of tongue nails I did recently, which were actually nails that I had on myself. That was really fun. It was sometimes very confusing to point at something and then there’s just a tongue sticking out. It was also very fun seeing people’s reactions. Nails already change the way you perceive your hands, but the tongues were so confusing, even to myself. I really, really loved them.
In what way did they change your perception?
There’s a lot of puking emojis, that’s the classic.
You forget about it, and you see your hands again, and there’s just, like, a body part, and it’s just so small, it looks so realistic. It’s also a little bit disgusting. It looks like you have little creatures coming out of your hands. Sometimes when I’m on the U-Bahn, I hide my hands, so people don’t stare at them so much because sometimes it’s a bit uncomfortable. But with the tongues, the whole time I was like, yeah, look at them! (laughs)
It was so funny, people taking pictures secretly. It’s just interesting to see how people react to these things. Something that is so common like a tongue or teeth, to see them in a different context I think is very confusing. And it draws a connection, even if you don’t know anything about nails. If you see tongues on nails, you’re gonna feel something.
Scrolling through your feed, the responses to even your most disconcerting creations are overwhelmingly positive. Do you ever get any hate or criticism?
Oh yeah! Especially at the moment, where my work is published outside of my bubble. In any mainstream media, the comments are really intense. (laughs) There’s a lot of puking emojis, that’s the classic. The conventional media always gets a lot of hate because people love hating on the Internet. It’s definitely funny, but it’s also shocking that people are this enraged by something that doesn’t even concern them.
This disgustingness or otherness is something that is very captivating.
It also happens in everyday life that people are weirded out. Most people don’t say it directly, but you can see the looks, and I’ve had moments when people really went ‘ewwww’, like, in my face. And I’m like, okaaaay… (laughs) I’m happy you feel something, I guess. Generally speaking, the positive aspects do outweigh the negative comments, but I think it’s crazy [that] you would say something negative about someone else’s body. So weird.
Not to mention the fact that your nails are actual little artworks. But I think you’re right, people simply love to hate on the internet.
Yeah, that’s so true, especially men. It’s like, it’s not for you! People also like to say, ‘Did she ever ask a man what they think about it?’ Why would I? (laughs)
What’s the appeal of ‘uglifying’ something that’s supposed to be pretty and neat?
I think it has something to do with how we perceive beauty and ugliness as opposed to one another. ‘Pretty’ is something that we’re used to; ‘ugly’ is something other [than that], maybe even something that we are disgusted by. This disgustingness or otherness is something that is very [captivating]. I think that is part of the appeal, but also, on a wider level, beauty comes with a lot of connotations, like class, race and gender, and deconstructing this is also very appealing.
Where do you think this craving for a seemingly unaesthetic kind of beauty comes from?
I feel like people are bored of trying to be perfect. It’s not possible anyways, you know, so why even try? That’s how I feel, especially when I was still doing fashion design. You’re never gonna be the best version of yourself. You’re never gonna create the perfect pretty dress or the perfect pretty set of nails. I think sometimes, the only way of dealing with the frustration of not being able to fulfil a certain beauty standard is to go the opposite direction and to find joy in things that are not considered as pretty or desirable. At least for me, that’s something that I can relate to.
I think there’s also a political drive behind it, to question and relearn the ways in which we perceive beauty as something very [connected] with race, gender, class, capitalism. That’s also where I see the potential for [deconstructing] categories of ‘pretty’ and ‘ugly’, which are still very binary. What I would love to see is for us to enjoy the things that we perceive and not so much classify, judge or value them.
Can you explain the class, gender and race aspects?
The class aspect has been there ever since people started to decorate themselves. Nails were always a symbol of class, and also gender. The aspect of race came into play in the 70s and 80s when [Black] women started to have more out-there nail art and really long nails, and that was very much judged by the white media: tacky, too loud, it’s disgusting compared to neatly manicured nails, not too long, not too colourful.
Now we see more of an appreciation of these [differentiations], and also of being loud and tacky. I think it’s important to remind ourselves of the reasons why we think nail art is tacky or loud. And it’s very important to be aware that it’s not something new. White women like me, I’m not a trailblazer of this [nail art].
Where do you think the pursuit of a new kind of beauty will take us?
I don’t think we can totally get rid of beauty standards and trends as long as capitalism exists. I would love it if you could look at something and just perceive it. I would like to have something outside of that binary of ugly and pretty, where you don’t really think about if it’s ugly or pretty but just perceive without categorising or judging. I think that’s something very powerful.
And it’s something very hard to do because everyone has been taught to constantly judge everything around them and to put things into categories or social structures, especially with clothes and fashion. You’re so used to putting people into categories by looking at them.
There was a moment at my sister’s graduation recently, where a family member turned to me and said, “Don’t look now, but look at the girl behind you.” She was wearing sandals and socks, and that family member was so shaken by it. And I realised that I rarely look at people’s fashion choices now and think, ‘that’s horrific’.
(laughs) The sock one is so funny because I’m sure these people don’t actually have these types of emotions about socks and sandals, but they’re so taught to find it ugly.
The only way of dealing with the frustration is to find joy in things that are not considered as pretty or desirable.
Is your nail art to be interpreted as satirical commentary on the beauty world, to an extent?
I don’t think so. People sometimes think doing nails is something that is funny to me or ironic, but I really don’t feel like that, because I have so much appreciation for any type of aesthetic. Maybe you could say that it’s a mocking of patriarchal beauty standards. The term ‘malicious compliance’ – you comply with something so much, in this case beauty standards, that people actually hate it. You’re malicious with your compliance. You can’t escape the beauty standards, so you overdo it so that people actually hate it.
In that way, you probably even get some satisfaction out of the hate comments…
Yeah, I mean, I’m always happy when men are not happy. (laughs)
Fuck, marry, kill: chrome finish, crackle polish, classic red.
Fuck crackle polish. Kill chrome finish. Marry red finish. Or do you mean to wear rather than apply? Then marry chrome, fuck crackle, kill red. But definitely fuck crackle, for sure.
- Find more of Camilla’s nail art here.
