If you’re looking to get creative with your nails, look no further than TRULY’s Nail Art Masterclass at WAH London. Priced at £99 for one person, the masterclass will give you the skills needed to apply fashion-forward designs including floral, leopard print, and pop art, as well as many other styles.
WAH’s trend-setting roots can be traced back to 2005, where it began as a street-smart feminist fanzine about girls in hip-hip, championing those contributing to the music and clothing scene. From there, WAH developed into a blog focusing on similar content, before founder Sharmadean Reid, with an inkling that nail art was about to hit the mainstream, decided in 2008 to open her own nail salon. After a successful launch, WAH Nails went on to paint nails for London Fashion Week before appearing in Oxford Circus’s Topshop in 2010. In addition, WAH has painted nails at music festivals, the Grand Prix, and even in Tokyo.
The TRULY nail art masterclass takes places at the Dalston salon, in an intimate group of up to six people, ensuring every attendee receives as much instruction as needed. We began with a short introduction to WAH’s history, and a run-through of what to expect: covering everything from how to prep your nails, creating themed designs, and finishing with the correct topcoat.
We began by prepping and filing our nails, ensuring they were ready for painting. Ikisha, who led the masterclass, provided invaluable tips on filing, applying polish and nail care. After applying our base coat, we then picked out our preferred nail art pens. Ikisha then demonstrated how to draw various shapes with them, including lines, circles, and dots, whilst telling us further details about WAH’s philosophy. Founder Sharmadean Reid says:“We take inspiration from fashion, art and tech, so when we create our designs, we collate all of the cool references that have been inspiring us. We’re a trend focused brand but we also start trends,
“We take inspiration from fashion, art and tech, so when we create our designs, we collate all of the cool references that have been inspiring us. We’re a trend focused brand but we also start trends, we bring VR to the beauty and nail industry like no brand has done before! This trend will just continue to grow within pop culture, but we’ll be at the forefront.”
We were then left to play around with the pens, practising different brush strokes on our nails.
This was the ‘practice’ section of the masterclass. We then removed the polish from our nails, and were handed magazines and books for inspiration. We used a cut-out of a pair of hands and pens and pencils to make our own designs, which we would then apply to our nails. Ikisha took us through some more advanced nail art techniques at this stage, including how to paint flowers and an eye.
We then repeated the process and applied our base coat, before selecting our nail art pens for the design stage. Here, Ikisha was on hand to offer further advice on technique. Once finished, we were shown the best tricks for photographing nails, and given a goody bag to take home, which included an online discount code for WAH London products, and two nail art pens.
The masterclass flew by; we couldn’t believe the time was up, and our nails were covered in a variety of designs, from daisies, to curves, to two-tones of cleverly-faded colour. The masterclass isn’t just an opportunity to learn cool techniques for painting your nails: it’s a chance to tap into your creativity, whilst giving your nails a hip-hop, punky twist.
Sharmadean Reid is currently opening WAH’s flagship store in Soho, where the TRULY masterclass will soon take place. She describes the store as:
“WAH Soho will be the salon of the future! It’s going to be so cool, it’ll be our flagship and the epitome of all things WAH! We’re combining beauty and tech to create the perfect hang out spot, we’ve got 6 manicure and 3 pedicure stations, a retail space featuring our fave independent beauty brands and a cocktail bar [and] having a nail salon in Soho means we’ll be surrounded by global girls and fresh inspiration that we can bring to our masterclasses.”