Nailin’ it ‘90s-style

COPIED

4 mins

COVER STORY

Nailin’ it ‘90s-style

Multi-award-winning nail tech & OPI educator, Lucy Price, shares her career highlights & experience styling the nails for this month’s Scratch cover

JESS WATTS REPORTS

Lucy Price has had an exceptional 2025 so far. She’s competed in 28 competitions, won the Scratch Stars Natural Nail Specialist of the Year Lucy award for a third year in a row

(thus gaining Scratch Stars Hall of Fame status), and taught a multitude of new skills to students in her role as an OPI educator. Lucy still finds time to create beautiful work for clients of family-owned salon, Nailspa in Huddersfield, and has most recently secured a Scratch front cover credit: creating the nail style for this month’s edition on behalf of OPI. I met her at the Wella World Studio in London: the setting for the photo shoot.

The venue was a hive of activity, which was impressive for 8:30am on a Friday. Lights were being set up, hair blow-dried, eyelids adorned with subtle shimmer – and everywhere I looked, team members were smiling.

Lucy was stood with model, Micah Barnes, peering intently at her hands and sizing each pre-decorated OPI GELevate™

Full Coverage Soft Gel Tip with extreme precision. I caught a glimpse of the artwork and was stunned by the intricacy and vivacity of the nails created: each featuring different combinations of rich colours. Lucy used OPI’s autumn 2025 collection, What’s Your Mani-tude?, which delivers rich, earthy tones with unapologetic punches of colour. Inspired by the ‘90s, What’s Your Mani-tude? is a blast from the past that feels incredibly current.

Price & Jess Watts

Of the nail design process, Lucy comments: “The colours in the collection are contrasting, but I wanted to create pleasing blends. When planning, I put all the shades I was going to use on a piece of foil, to see how they would work effectively together.”

Lucy’s brief for the cover shoot consisted of a general outline from the OPI team, complemented by a mood board created by OPI brand manager, Mei Posso. Lucy suggested featuring a staple autumn item – a woolly jumper, which led her to a key piece of inspiration for the nails: a striped Acne Studios scarf. She wanted to capture the blended, but still strongly separate colours of the scarf, and translate the look onto nail tips. “The finish is not meant to be seamless,” Lucy shares. “There’s meant to be some definition, and a little bit of texture.”

Lucy achieved the Scratch Stars Natural Nail Specialist of the Year title in July for the third year running, and shares: “The foundation of the nail and preparation process is really important, and was for Micah’s nails. However, it is always fun to experiment with colour and artistry following this.”

Cover concept

From a Scratch Stars champion to a Scratch front cover stylist, Lucy was heavily involved in the cover concept. Built around nostalgia, Micah sported a ‘90s make-up look with a deep, vampy

Future focus

Lucy shares her upcoming trend predictions, commenting: “Nail shades will transition from burgundy to purple. Noughties nostalgia brings elements of the Groovy Chick character, so purple will be popular.” For Lucy personally, the future is filled with helping others. “I want to share the skills that got me to where I am: competition preparation and product training with OPI. My sister thinks I should branch out and enter a different Scratch Stars Awards category next year, but we will see,” she smiles.

From crustaceans to cuticles!

Before becoming a nail pro, Lucy had her sights set on being a marine biologist. Her favourite week of the year is Shark Week, and she loves to incorporate the sea into nail designs.

lip courtesy of make-up artist, Chloe Palmer. Freelance hairstylist & educator, Jo Wilcox, crafted a bouncy updo with a zig-zag parting and colourful clip embellishments, while stylist, Madeline Dungar, opted for all-out grunge: selecting denim clothing and stacks of silver jewellery. Of the finished image, Lucy comments: “It looks amazing. My favourite part of the day was seeing the look come together through the styling, nails, hair and make-up.”

When photographer, Leo Hoang, started snapping, the excitement in the room was palpable. Music by Rihanna played in the background, while Micah pretended to gossip on a retro Nokia phone. Nostalgia seeped into every pore of the shoot and the OPI What’s Your Mani-tude? collection, making a blast from the past seem oh-so current.

NAIL TALK

Lucy used OPI Nail Envy on the natural nails of model, Micah, before applying OPI GELevate™ Full Coverage Soft Gel Tips in Almond. She used OPI GelColor in Put It In Nude-tral as a base shade. “Great features of the GELevate™ Soft Gel Tips include that they are pre-etched, and colour can be applied straight onto the nail,” Lucy shares.

She chose all 12 OPI GelColor shades in the What’s Your Mani-tude? collection, alongside a limited-edition brown crème: Purrrride. Lucy used a liner brush and similar technique to that used when creating tie-dye nails, ‘but with much shorter strokes to achieve the blend, instead of pulling the shades through one another’. “I left gaps between each colour to stipple and blend them together,” she explains. “I didn’t use hues that would necessarily blend into each other. For example, turquoise and orange, so while there is a blend, there is also texture present: like a woolly scarf.

“OPI GelColor is highly pigmented, and I love the brand’s 4-in-1 Builder Gel formula,” Lucy continues. “OPI cares about the customer, and about us, the nail techs.”