What do nails and trainers have in common? Jessica Washick, apparently. After relocating from New York City to Portland, the highly sought after nail artist turned sneaker designer now works as a Senior Color Designer at Nike and is behind some of our favorite Air Force 1 styles.
According to Washick, she started painting her nails in 2007 after a tough break-up, and shared her nail art through her tongue-in-cheek blog titled “You Don’t Need A Man, You Need A Manicure.”
With love for anything fashion, the nail artist went on to study fashion design in Parsons, which ultimately lead to her current job. “I’ve always been interested in fashion because growing up it was a world unknown to me,” she shared with HYPEBAE. “I wanted to understand why things worked or didn’t, and what warranted a good or bad review. My curiosity lead me to study it seriously and I ended up going to Parsons for fashion design.”
“Prior to Nike, I gravitated towards women’s accessories, and designed them at Coach and Marc Jacobs,” she added. “But I view nails as a built-in accessory so it’s all a part of the fashion world in my eyes. Whether modest or complex, nails are very much a part of the look.”
And talking about the process of designing both nails and sneakers Washick said that “with both nails and sneakers, you’re pushing boundaries within a confined, classic space that’s personal to a lot of people. They’re both blank canvases but you can’t do just anything. It has to be functional to some extent. It’s also a delicate balance of standing out but being relatively easy to wear. And I also love that people feel so passionately about both. They’re both unifying in that way.”
Take a look at some of her more hyped nail art (and some Nike sneakers), shared through her Instagram page.
