FASHION Magazine

Here’s some Friday morning fun for you! The show that brought us One Direction and the country that gave us the Spice Girls have pretty much done it again: Little Mix is a new girl group that formed on the UK’s X Factor in 2011. If you’ve been missing the upbeat pop music and feisty lyrics that dominated the charts in the late ’90s, it’s time to give Little Mix a listen. (The video for “How Ya Doing” could easily be mistaken for a Destiny’s Child song and makes us want to dye our hair bright colours ASAP.) The four-girl group not only won X Factor, they launched a debut album, DNA, that dominated the charts in Britain—which is why they’re now in North America to do the same.

And because any girl group worth their salt is all about individual style coming together in one sassy package, Little Mix has created a custom nail art tutorial with Toronto’s Pinky’s Nails.

See more of the nail art from Ashtiani Spring 2013 »

Last season I had the chance to work backstage during Toronto Fashion Week with the team from Tips Nail Bar. This season, the tables were turned: Essie invited me to experience what it’s like to be a model (er, nail-wise, that is) by getting the look for Ashtiani Spring 2013 applied on my own nails. Rita Remark, the lead Essie nail artist for World MasterCard Fashion Week, was leading the charge backstage, working with the team from Pinky’s Nails to design and apply creative manicures for seven shows throughout the week. (That’s more than 850 nails that need to be prepped and painted beforehand!)