“Her nails are major,” a colleague exclaimed, having seen FKA twigs’s claw-like manicure in British Vogue’s April 2024 cover shoot. Captured standing in one of London’s classic red phone boxes, twigs’s nails are, indeed, major – they’re the work of manicurist Nikki Panic, who created the “dinosaur-inspired” talons especially for the shoot. “You might initially think they’re cat claws – actually they’re T-Rex claws, but make it high-end fashion… make it twigs,” she tells me.
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Under intense time pressure to create the nails – 45 minutes to an hour, which isn’t much when you’re creating a bespoke dinosaur look – Panic harnessed the powers of 3D gel and resin to sculpt the nails into shape. “You have to build the material up, then you start shaping it with a drill and files until you get the shape that you want,” she says. “It takes time and you’ve got to work out how to build them up. It’s not just a case of getting a shape like this in store, you have to create it.”
The result is a dramatic manicure, marked more for its shape than any colour or nail art. “It’s clear – but not crystal clear – with just a hint of nude colour,” she says. Panic credits twigs’s “ethereal presence” as her inspiration for each of the manicures she creates for the star, alongside a phone full of reference images.
Since the pair began working together a couple of years ago – a union that began when twigs DMed Panic on Instagram – there has been everything from “simple everyday sets to 3D liquid droplet nails to chrome bronze”, and the aim is always to “elevate whatever look she’s doing – it’s not just a set, but something that will complement the overall aesthetic,” she explains.
