kyiv, Ukraine — Viktoria Gulieva was sitting in a fuchsia armchair with a denim sheath dress over her pregnant belly and her dark hair tied back. Her Pomeranian dog was sitting on her lap. A salon employee delicately painted pale pink polish on her toenails.
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“We get our nails done because it’s like emotional support for us,” said Gulieva, 30, who is also a hairstylist. “We do something to feel better. Because of everything that’s going on, because of the war, we are on emotional brink. If we get our nails done, at least we can look at our hands and say, ‘Those look good.’”
Paying attention to beauty may seem like a trivial concern when the fate of Ukraine is at stake, as Russia intensifies its bombing of Ukrainian cities and Moscow’s troops advance on the eastern front. But for many women it is an important ritual in life.
Keeping up appearances has also become a small way for Ukrainians to show Russia that this war has not broken them.
Even a simple act of pampering yourself can be difficult to do. Power outages and air raid sirens can make it difficult for women to get their nails done —However, many make the effort. Shown: a friendly waitress with nails painted like blue crocodile skin and a government worker in a kyiv suburb who once attended up to a dozen funerals a day and helped supervise the digging of mass graves, but still looks a perfect french manicure.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian women have adapted. They still wear long, sparkly dresses in kyiv, the capital, but with practical shoes, often sneakers — making it easier to move quickly if an air raid siren sounds. They put their hair into complicated updos when a lack of power means no hot water.
The general manager of L’Oréal in Ukraine described how beauty rituals boosted people’s morale, calling it the “red lipstick effect”. Even women who have taken jobs in the mines—because the men who once worked there are in the Army—sometimes have long, red nails.
“Our women are unstoppable,” said Donna Todorova, manager of the Kukla salon, where Gulieva got her nails done.
Women in Ukraine are renowned for having beautiful nails, and the country’s nail professionals—called “nail masters”—are coveted in salons across Europe. Their manicures aren’t typically bland monochrome nails: Each nail has long been seen as its own canvas, often detailed like a miniature painting.
But after the Russian invasion, nails became something else. Many women decorated their nails with patriotic symbols, painted blue and yellow like the country’s flag, or with sunflowers, omnipresent in Ukrainian fields, or red poppies, officially designated as a symbol of remembrance of the war dead.
Fingernails also became ways to identify the dead. A clinic employee who died from missile debris in kyiv in July was recognized by her pink manicure with white polka dots, the victim’s daughter said.
Back then, as Russian troops advanced toward kyiv, they seized a beauty salon in Bucha called Profi, near a major intersection and the worst killings. The snipers stood outside the second-story living room window, shooting at cars and buses, the owner, Iryna Davydovych, recalled, adding that her family remained in the basement of their nearby home before escaping to live nearby with her mother. Then the Ukrainian Army expelled the Russians.
“The Russians left destruction and a lot of garbage,” Davydovych, 54, recalled.
In April 2022, Davydovych and her husband finished cleaning the salon and the electricity was restored. The business reopened. Davydovych’s husband then joined the Army.
“Sometimes you sit down and cry,” he said. “But in the morning you get up, you paint your lips, you come out looking beautiful and you water the flowers.”
Today 15 people work at Profi, including four nail masters. Tetiana Kravchenko, known as Tania, is so popular that she has appointments weeks in advance. On a recent Wednesday, she painted Natalia Fomenko’s nails with fluorescent green and black designs.
“We followed Tania everywhere,” Fomenko said. “If she ever goes to kyiv, we will follow her to kyiv.”
The most popular styles in Ukraine are nude, French manicure and occasionally pastel glitter.e, said the nail teachers. Kravchenko said more and more women were opting for practical manicures. “Naturally, it’s the new trend,” he said.
Gulieva’s family once owned a beauty salon on the Dnieper River. In March 2022, a rocket destroyed the classroom, breaking windows and ruining equipment, Gulieva said. He fled to Germany with his mother, sister and brother. But a few months later, she returned to be near her husband, who had enlisted in the Army. His mother and sister work in German salons.
Customers sometimes call Kukla to ask about cancellations due to blackouts or missile attacks, but that rarely happens. On July 8, when missile strikes killed more than 42 people across Ukraine, most in kyiv, The salon employees took refuge in a subway station.
“When the airstrike ended, the clients returned and the nail technicians continued their work,” said Todorova, manager of Kukla. “As far as I remember, no one canceled their appointments that day.”
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