Fresh out of university, the young British designer Anna Goswami is already making a name for herself with her final undergraduate project – a collection of dresses made entirely out of false nails. The images posted on her Instagram account have gone viral as people continue to share the original fashion designs across social platforms.
The nails, individually hand painted by Goswami, enhance the pop-art style of the dresses by lending a pixelated texture to the comic book-like faces built into each design. Kind of like beading, the different-coloured nails are strategically arranged to create an overall pattern, or in this case an image in the textile. At first glance, the dresses look heavily sequinned but on closer inspection the nails adopt the appearance of a mermaid’s tail covered in scales.
In a recent interview, Goswami revealed the inspiration behind the unique fashion pieces: "I'm a nail art obsessive, and have always been a fan of beading and heavily embellished fabrications, so I just put the two together and decided to use false nails as my beads."
