It feels like it’s been so long since I last posted anything! I’ve been so busy with a new job and finishing some job related courses that I’ve barely had time to breathe. But I’ve definitely had time to do my nails!
A few things are happening in the nail world and one of the most controversial is the battle between DIY beauty giant Sally Hansen and a Korean nail artist that goes by her salon name and IG handle Unistella. Sally Hansen just released a product called Salon K Designs which are supposed to be the DIY version of popular nail trends in South Korea. Countries like South Korea and Japan are known for their very specific style of nail art. If you see it, you’ll know. Their nails look almost like candy, they’re so shiny and the colours are just gorgeously blended together in perfection. They also love their chunky nail art, with gems and nail jewelry galore.
Unistella is known for her beautiful and “out of the box” designs, like her shattered glass nails which were all over IG in 2015 (they look like pieces of glass have been glued to the nails), as well as her newer wire nails (which are nude nails with gold wire designs around them). Salon K Designs are basically mass produced decals of those Unistella designs, giving no credit or payment to the artist.
Personally, I think originality, appropriation, inspiration, imitation, and flat out plagiarism have a bunch of blurred out and grey areas and it is so difficult to distinguish between them, as well it depends on the context of each situation. In this case, according to Unistella, Sally Hansen had even approached her about doing a collaboration, which really just adds insult to injury as they just called that off and copied her designs instead. Also, what is appalling is that she is a small, but successful, business owner in one small country while Sally Hansen is a huge, global beauty company who can stand to make millions by walking all over single artists’ and their work. Not cool.
This whole situation got me thinking of what you have rights on as you create your own work and when is it okay to use someone else’s work. It’s really complicated.
I love using work that inspires me as a starting point and giving it my own twist (though for some, that might be too close to unoriginal) and I also use love hopping across media for inspiration (grabbing inspiration from paintings, from sculpture, from animation, from fashion.. you name it!) as well as mixing and matching inspiration sources.
I remember seeing those shattered glass nails on Pinterest a while back (way before I had my own IG or blog) and trying them on myself. I didn’t claim to have been the one to come up with the idea but I also did not post about where I had seen the idea or if I knew the original author (I didn’t). Grey area.
This weekend I was inspired by these Dolce & Gabbana shoes that I had seen on my feed months ago, but had the joy of seeing in person last week as I was browsing through a fancy store in a Toronto mall. And holy wow. Credit where credit is due.
gold & polish 