Jessica Washick’s career path is original, to say the least. The celebrity nail artist switched gears after relocating from New York City to Portland, and now works as a Senior Color Designer at Nike.
“I’ve always been interested in fashion because growing up it was a world unknown to me,” she told HYPEBAE. “I wanted to understand why things worked or didn’t, and what warranted a good or bad review. My curiosity lead me to study it seriously and I ended up going to Parsons for fashion design.”
“Prior to Nike, I gravitated towards women’s accessories, and designed them at Coach and Marc Jacobs,” she went on to explain. “But I view nails as a built-in accessory so it’s all a part of the fashion world in my eyes. Whether modest or complex, nails are very much a part of the look.”
The nails artist turned sneaker designer still shares her eye-popping nail art on her Instagram page, where she has amassed almost 80 thousand followers. And when asked about the similarities between painting nails and designing sneakers she said: “with both nails and sneakers, you’re pushing boundaries within a confined, classic space that’s personal to a lot of people.”
Take a look at some of her boundary-pushing designs.
