Surprisingly, nail art took center stage on the 2024 Paris Olympics. Gymnast Jordan Chiles he said her long acrylic nails remind her that she needs to be more careful not to break any and run fast Noah Lyles showed off his manicure through the race.

Sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson is one other athlete whose nails are a vital a part of her matchday look. They are very long and colourful, following the instance of the fastest female runner on the earth, the late Olympic athlete Florence Griffith Joyner.

When Richardson competes in the ladies’s 4×100-meter relay on Friday, she hopes to win a medal and gold while wearing a set of specially designed, press-on nails designed by one in every of her manicurists, Angie Aguirre.

Aguirre became a web sensation after Richardson’s appearance on the July 2024 digital cover. Richardson is wearing a nail art kit that Aguirre made and sent overnight for the photo shoot.

flew to Central Florida, where Richardson was training for the Olympics, and Aguirre sent a set of nails for Aguirre’s cousin, who lives in Florida, to apply to Richardson’s nails for the photo shoot. The nail technician from Brooklyn, New York, said he shared the photo with Griffith Joyner with a special request: “Hey, can you make her nails look like this?”

So she took inspiration and decided to create nail art using items Richardson likes. “A lot of gold,” Richardson said. “She always wears jewelry and gold medals, because why not?” Griffith Joyner had stars on her nails within the photo, so Aguirre found gold metal stars and put them on her nails. “I wanted the nails to stand out, and they did.”

“It was great to see the photoshoot (when it was released) because it was in March,” Aguirre said. “You’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t wait to see the photoshoot, I can’t wait to see the photoshoot,’ and then you forget about the photoshoot. There’s so much going on in the meantime that when it came out, I was like, ‘Wow, this is dope.’”

For some reason, Aguirre said, she didn’t expect all of the love she received on social media when she posted the duvet. “We did some advertising, but you know, I guess I didn’t have time to put it in perspective, that it was… You know.”

Her friend, a celeb, a hairdresser Nikki Nelmshad to tell Aguirre how special that moment was. “She called me and said, ‘My friend, you’re on the cover, I don’t think I’m on the cover.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, right?’ You need people to remind you of your accomplishments. Sometimes you forget to live in the moment.”

It was a probability to stop and appreciate the popularity, in addition to all of the work and dedication Aguirre has put in to get her business to this point. “It wasn’t just a little nail, you know, because the industry can be like that,” she said. “A lot of times, the spotlight is on hair, on makeup, but nail techs often feel left out and not as important. So to be on the cover was f—ing dope, excuse my language.”

Richardson also wears her nails well. She is expressive when she speaks, gesturing in a way that is comparable to a few of Aguirre’s clients. “Some people talk with their hands, like I do, and some are very quiet and mellow. Thank God I don’t have any mellow clients,” she said with amusing.

Aguirre landed Chicago Sky winger Angel Reese as a client after the nail technician’s daughter saw Reese’s social media ad for the perfect nail services while she was visiting Atlanta. Aguirre and her daughter were driving on the highway when her daughter told her Reese needed her nails done.

“She’s like, ‘Mom, Angel Reese is going to be in Brooklyn. She’s on Instagram,’” Aguirre recalls. Her daughter sent Reese an Instagram message from Aguirre’s phone, then called Aguirre’s agent. “Literally from the freeway to when I got to my friend’s house, as soon as we got out of the car, my agent called me back and said, ‘You’re hired!’”

Aguirre said her daughter did the identical thing with social media. Influencer Tabitha Browntelling her to message Brown directly on Instagram. She did, and Brown responded, as did actress Aisha Hinds on one other occasion.

Up until that time, Aguirre’s profession had many stops and starts. She began doing nails when she was 12. She’s Panamanian and grew up in Brooklyn, where the ladies in her family ran a salon. Doing nails was a fun side hustle throughout college, where Aguirre earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and psychology. When she turned 30, Aguirre decided to go to cosmetology school at night. She wanted to get her license and begin a nail polish line.

In 2011, she opened her first salon with a friend called Very Polished within the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The stress of managing people was overwhelming when Aguirre only wanted to do nails. She left the salon in 2015. Two years later, she ventured back to work with Neal FarinahBeyoncé’s hairdresser. After getting to know Farinah, Aguirre transformed a spare room in her boyfriend’s apartment right into a beauty salon and made her books available to clients.

“The minute I got on Instagram, my calendar was open, I didn’t have a day off,” she recalled. “And to this day, I always tell people I’m so grateful I’m not one of those manicurists who’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s so slow.’ I’m not. I’ve never had that problem. It could be rain, sleet, hail, clients still come in.”

She jokes that her boyfriend asked if only black women were doing their beauty routines recurrently. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, but I know we’re not messing around.’” She continued doing nails in his guest room until July 2018, when she opened one other salon. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and New York City went into lockdown.

“I was exhausted,” she said. “A lot of things started happening when we reopened after COVID.” People were coming in and he or she was busy, but something didn’t feel right. The shop had been broken into and windows had been smashed on one other occasion. Aguirre felt like she couldn’t determine what to do but had to keep the salon open for the nail technicians who work for her.

“And I think, this nail thing is really depressing,” Aguirre said. “People don’t know the story of how this nail technician creates this kind of work, what you have to go through just to exist in this world, right?”

Last summer, Aguirre decided to work full-time again, but this time with an agent, a client of hers who had been landing her editorial assignments here and there. She had previously worked with celebrities like singer-actress Janelle Monae, who Nelms introduced to Aguirre in 2017, but her agent set her up with Richardson. “Sha’Carri is fucking amazing,” Aguirre said. “She’s a beautiful person.”

The pair met just after Richardson was suspended in 2021 after testing positive for THC and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. That same 12 months, Aguirre did her nails for The ESPYS.

“She was pretty quiet, still really nice,” Aguirre said. “But, you know, you could tell something was off. Fast forward to last year, and my agent booked me for a shoot at Oikos. I got there, saw her, and thought, oh, there’s something different.”

Aguirre said she couldn’t quite put her finger on it on the time, but looking back, Richardson’s mood seemed lighter. She smiled more. Since March, Aguirre has been doing Richardson’s nails Sprite Campaign and her Powerade ad. When she couldn’t physically be on set, like when she was shooting in Florida and when the Nike On Air event took place in Paris, she would have a specially designed nail kit sent to her overnight.

“I send her a message like, ‘Hey, put a lot of glue on these, because if you win a medal, you have to hold the medal without a nail! Why did you have to win the gold medal in Budapest and you’re holding it and you’re missing two nails?’ And her coach says, ‘Do you make nails? Can you think of a way to keep these things from falling off?’” she said with amusing.

Richardson picked up the silver medal after ending second to Julien Alfred of St. Lucia in the ladies’s 100-meter dash without missing a single nail, and when she helped her teammates win the primary leg of the 100-meter relay on Thursday. Richardson’s latest Parisian nail look will debut on Friday.

“She’s full of life,” Aguirre said, describing what she likes most about working with Richardson. “She’s focused. She says what she thinks, her word is her bond. And how does she treat people? She’s so easy to work with. She’s amazing at what she does, so if I can bring something extra to the team by working with her, I’m all for it.”