OPI, Nail Polish, History.

Egyptians used nail color to signify social order, with shades of red at the top. Queen Nefertiti, the wife of the king Akhenaton, colored her fingernails and toenails ruby red; Cleopatra favored crimson. Women of lower rank who colored their nails were permitted only pale colors.

By the turn of the 19th century, nails were tinted with scented red oils, and polished or buffed with a chamois cloth, rather than simply painted. English and US 19th century cookbooks had directions for making nail paints. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, women pursued a polished, rather than painted, look by massaging tinted powders and creams into their nails, then buffing them shiny. One such polishing product sold around this time was Graf's Hyglo nail polish paste. Some women during this period painted their nails with clear, glossy varnish applied with a camel-hair brush. When automobile paint was created around 1920, it inspired the introduction of colored nail enamels.