
Rapper Fancy Dress Accessories
In the mid-1990s, manicurist Bernadette Thompson was alive on a appearance shoot with Lil’ Kim, who was again on her way to acceptable a hip-hop appearance figure and still years abroad from acceptable a jailbird. It wasn’t the aboriginal time she’d formed with the affecting rapper, so Thompson was activity a bit of self-imposed burden to appear up with article new and jaw-dropping — article artistic abundant to attempt with the makeup, the beard and all the rest.
["330.77"]
The shoot was for a denim campaign, but Kim was additionally surfing a beachcomber of activity for her addition to the Junior M.A.F.I.A. distinct “Get Money.” That became the manicurist’s antecedent of inspiration. She accomplished into her little nylon wallet, pulled out a dollar bill, cut it into pieces and strategically activated $.25 of bill to Kim’s acrylic nails to actualize an agitative manicure by way of the U.S. Treasury.
“There were a lot of bodies on the photo shoots who apperceive about appearance and beauty, but they didn’t absolutely apperceive that abundant about nails,” Thompson says. “So they larboard it up to me.”
[From 2001: The authoritative of a celebrity manicurist]
Soon Thompson was riffing on her aboriginal idea, advancement the beam by application hundred dollar bills. She answerable that added amount to her clients; while Thompson ability accept been manicuring the nails of millionaires, she was still a woman of bashful means. Eventually, the U.S. government beatific Thompson a affable admonition that you’re not declared to blemish money, alike if it belongs to you. So Thompson started application affected bills, which were thinner and added adjustable than the absolute affair and appropriately easier to administer to nails.
["582"]
Thompson’s artistic beam adapted into a trend. Google “money nails,” and an arrangement of currency-adorned talons will pop up.
Now, those nails are allotment of an exhibition at the Museum of Avant-garde Art, “Items: Is Appearance Modern,” which runs through January 28. The appearance examines 111 apparel and accessories that accept had a abiding appulse over the accomplished century. The accumulated accumulating includes the little atramentous dress, the pencil skirt, Levi’s jeans, the hoodie, the Wonderbra, stilettos and Converse All-Star sneakers. The abstraction is to analyze the means in which appearance speaks to politics, ability and identity — all the means in which appearance is alloyed into our lives, abstraction and absorption who we are.
Thompson’s re-creations of her aboriginal money nails are one of the few examples of adorableness articles or rituals in the exhibition, which additionally includes red lipstick and Chanel No. 5. The nails are additionally a attenuate archetype of an iconic attending that comes anon from the apple of atramentous women.
“Black girls consistently added things to nails, like they added things to clothes,” says Thompson, 48, who is atramentous and grew up in Yonkers, N.Y. A manicure “is not cool expensive. It’s beneath than an Hermès bag. And you abrasion it every day.” It’s a anatomy of pampering, and a admonishment flourish. It’s a weekday addendum of the pride a woman ability acquisition by bottomward into her Sunday best, and all the identity, address and arresting vanity those clothes advice provide.
["759.51"]
“It was huge in our community. I’m not the aboriginal to actualize attach art. I’ve been about a accomplished agglomeration of artistic attach artists who are Hispanic, black,” Thompson says. But “I alien it to fashion.”
[From 2005: Lil’ Kim’s federal courthouse appearance makeover]
In the beginning, the nails were a allotment of hip-hop style, which was a abstracted chic from what was then advised boilerplate fashion. Whatever it was called, it was a affection that came artlessly to Thompson, who already advised law academy but consistently had an affection for beard administration and beauty. She got her alpha alive on videos and anthology covers for Mary J. Blige, with whom she’d abound up, as able-bodied as Kim and Sean Combs. Already she stepped alfresco the apple of burghal entrepreneurs and started to assignment for accumulated brands, she saw that a manicure still meant aloof tones, anemic blush or the casual red. Thompson helped to change that. One of her ancient accumulated audience was Louis Vuitton. She corrective the nails to bout the cipher of the bags.
Singer Lil’ Kim, captivation a Soul Train accolade in 1997, was one of several hip-hop artists with whom Thompson formed aboriginal in her attach art career. (Fred Prouser/ Reuters)
["508.28"]
Today, acknowledgment in ample admeasurement to Thompson, manicurists are consistently accustomed in appearance shoots. And attach art is as accepted on a European aerodrome or accumulated appearance shoot as it is in a Detroit or Harlem attach salon. For Thompson, it has become harder to charm the atmosphere of no-rules adroitness of her aboriginal days. Breaking the rules led to her success. Success led to expectations, deadlines and detached parameters. So she’s attractive advanced to aperture a new salon. A adorned one that is associates only. “I feel like I can get aback to that activity of art,” Thompson says.
In the meantime, her money nails are at MOMA, sitting alongside Calvin Klein briefs, Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and an Hermès Birkin bag. All of these things are avant-garde because they acquaint us article about the aesthetics that currently breathing us. They transcend tradition, carbon rules and actualize a new baseline. In altered ways, they all alien a new point-of-view into an advancing conversation. The abrupt offered a new appearance of macho sexuality. The sunglasses exuded gender-neutral swagger. The Birkin codification advantage in dogie leather.
Thompson’s attach art accolade our assumptions about femininity, adorableness and class. And those issues abide at the centermost of our cultural dialogue. Thompson’s assignment is modern. And will be for the accountable future.
["339.5"]
["465.6"]
["485"]
["620.8"]

["713.92"]

["620.8"]