Dollypop NYC: June 2011

As I said in my first post, one of the main purposes of this blog is to discuss gal things in New York. In my opinion, nails are one of the most important aspects of gal style, so I'm going to do a review on my amazing nailist, Naomi Yasuda at Hello Beautiful Salon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Ok, so I'd really like to be able to do a cut, but honestly, I don't feel like playing around with HTML right now [if anyone has any tips, please feel free to share them]...so, this post is kind of image heavy. )

(excuse the fact that all these 1st pics are from the same cam whore session.)

White with multi-colored pastel leopard, 3D bows and rhinestones.

I knew about Naomi's work before because I've done a ton of research about every nail salon in NYC that does cal-gel and nail art (I'm pretty addicted to Japanese nail art, I've got two separate Japanese nail catalog apps on my phone). Then, I became friends with my "onee sama" Masako, who is originally from Japan but has lived in New York for the past 6 years, and who happened to be friends with Naomi. I met Naomi at a "Pray for Japan" charity auction that she and Masako organized and I volunteered at. She was super sweet, and a few months later I finally decided to call the salon and book an appointment with her. Naomi is actually a well-known nail artist, her work recently appeared in both the US and Japanese versions of Nylon, she has also done the nails for Chanel and Fendi ads, and she has celebrity clients such as Alicia Keys, Kim Catrall, Keri Hilson and Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. That being said, I was pretty lucky to be able to book an appointment just one week from the day I called.

The salon itself is inside a sort of little arcade of shops on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It's really cute inside, funky with lots of leopard. I had come with an idea of what I wanted already, but if you don't know, that's ok because Naomi has a couple of catalogues and magazines full of inspiration that you can browse through (I looked through them just for fun). I had brought some pictures for the kind of thing I wanted, and I sat down and we discussed the design I wanted, which was originally just the white with pastel leopard spots and a pink bow at the top of one nail on each hand. I had sculpted acrylic nails which were really badly outgrown, and two of which had broken very painfully, leaving me with extremely short natural nails on those 2 fingers. I had wanted to remove the acrylic and replace it with cal-gel, as it is much better for the nails, but Naomi advised me that if we removed the acrylic my nails would be extremely fragile and damaged, so instead, she said she was going to put the cal-gel over the acrylic, and over (a long) time as we kept doing the cal-gel over the acrylic, eventually the acrylic would grow out entirely and I'd be left with just the cal-gel over healthy nails. That being said, the application of the cal-gel over the acrylic and even over my new growth where I had needed a refill was extremely even. Before she started to work on my nails, she noticed I had brought an issue of Popteen to read and offered me an issue of Nuts that her friend (a hairstylist at the salon) had with her. I thought that was really sweet of her to go the extra mile in making me comfortable. I like my nails rounded and a bit pointy and she was very good about shaping them the way I asked her to. They were a bit too pointy for my taste at first, but I asked her to round them out a bit and then they were perfect. Once she started with the design, she suggested that instead of doing the whole nail base with the white, that we leave the half-circle of natural nail at the bottom, so that way, it would be harder to tell when there was re-growth. Because cal-gel lasts a fairly long time (3-4 weeks) I agreed. Since we were doing the half circle on the bottom, we decided that jewels would look good and that for balance, the bows should go near the bottom rather than the top. She was also really great about adjusting the colors of the leopard spots exactly how I wanted them. I'm not really sure how long it took, since I have a really horrible sense of time and because I was busy reading the nail catalogues, Popteen, and Nuts. I get bored easily when I'm sitting in salons, but I wasn't this time, and it passed pretty quickly. I was pleasantly surprised with the cost also. Having celebrity clients and also doing flat art, 3d art, and putting a lot of jewels, doing sculpted extensions on the two nails I had broken, plus being located in New York, where things are just generally more expensive, I has bracing myself for it to be over $100. I was pleasantly surprised when the total charge was only $70!!!!!

Overall, my experience was extremely pleasant, the quality is great and the price is right. I will definitely be returning to Naomi for my nails.

You can view Naomi's work at her website. For more examples of her work and to make an appointment, visit Hello Beautiful.
EDIT: I found this video of Naomi's work that aired on NHK on Youtube (even if you don't speak Japanese [I don't], it's worth checking out!)

(my necklace says my cat's name :S)

Today it's two weeks exactly since I got my nails done by Naomi, and here's what they look like (excuse my ragged cuticles).

Naomi's nail art was featured in both the US and Japan issues of Nylon! (There were more pages to the spread, but I didn't photograph them).

Now for the mini haul! These pictures are all pretty old, but here are some purchases I made around a month? ago.

Sheer with white polka dots, sheer with pink bows, and black knit over-the-knee socks (all by Tabbi Socks) from Mini Mini Market in Williamsburg. Bunny hair clips and bear keychain from random 99 cents stores here in Greenpoint.