Wild Thing: Spring's New Python Pedicure

The python trend is everywhere this spring and fall. Including my feet. I’m not talking about Marc Jacobs’s chunky wooden platforms with the skinny red straps or YSL’s intensely beautiful shades-of-blue wedges—although they’re on my list. I’m talking about my toes.

Four weeks ago, I rode the elevator up to a suite in a midtown hotel, relaxed into a plush armchair, and left two hours later with subtly shimmering navy serpentine toes. They look strikingly like a clutch I own. Actually, I should wear them together. 
The pedicurist—the talented Terri Silacci, in town from her salon in Monterey, California—didn’t press printed decals or paint her approximation of a python pattern onto my nails. She used actual snakeskin.

The delicate, almost transparent skin, which looks like very finely embossed parchment, was kindly donated by a four-foot-long female python who shimmied out of it one day, the natural shedding process for snakes as they grow. “Talk about renewable resources!” said Silacci as she laid small, textured pieces from the glossy, tubelike swath—meticulously hand-cut to fit the shape and size of each nail—on my toes between a thick layer of instant-drying gel base color (a deep blue called On the Dark Side) and a chip-resisting clear sealant. “Small snakes are usually my favorite. You get a lot more detail per square inch,” she mused, picking up a very fine artist’s brush, dipping it in a small pot of my accent shade (a metallic gray called Golden Silver), and tracing the ridges of the pattern to give “the outline of the snake some color.” Then she sealed me up with another coat of bulletproof clear and scooted my feet under a UV lamp for several minutes.

Silacci was using products from Bio Sculpture, a company founded in South Africa 22 years ago, for which she serves as ambassador/high priestess of the pedicure. Their formulas—which they describe as the “original no-chip” gel nail lacquers—can be applied directly to the natural nail, skipping the toxic primers and bonders that can leave nails damaged, dehydrated, and generally trashed (I speak from experience). The results dry instantly and last up to eight weeks, miraculously resisting all signs of wear-and-tear. Silacci was drawn to the company, whose polishes are distributed in 32 countries and used in many Aveda salons, four years ago by its refreshing safety profile, a rare find in the nail world: “At the time I was breast-feeding my child, and I didn’t want to breathe harsh chemicals,” she says. After attending Bio Sculpture “boot camp” in L.A., she came home a convert. The gels come in 170 shades (their first color, Pillar Box, a classic red, is still the company best seller), and the stiffness of the finish is customizable. There’s the Flexigel option for dancers and runners, explains Silacci, and S-Gel for those who want extra strength.

Though spring’s most stylish pedicure appears to be sent from fashion heaven, plucked straight off the runways, it was not Alber Elbaz of Lanvin (those python-printed dresses!) or Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga (those must-have totes!) from whom Silacci sought her inspiration. She got the idea from her kids, ages four and six. “What happened was my daughter and son went over to our neighbor, who runs a reptile shop in Salinas. He gave them natural sheds [from snakes], and you know how children are: They’re fascinated with something for a minute, and then they toss it. As a mom, you either put it away or make use of it.” She took it to work.

These days, Silacci is running a full-time python-pedi enterprise at the Euphoria Lounge in Monterey. Thanks to her faithful neighbor, she is well supplied with “enough snakeskin to cover the entire city.” She’s been experimenting with gold and silver leaf, too—embellishing her snakeskin toes even further for a lacquered, cloisonné effect—as well as peacock plumes and speckled guinea feathers. For the many nail artists she has begun to train around the country in the art of the snake, she’s also devised a synthetic, embossed version of her python pattern because, she admits, “it’s just not practical for a manicurist to go out looking for snakeskin.”

$300; for salons performing the Bio Sculpture Gel snakeskin pedicur