black owned nail polish

People of Color, a Black Owned Nail Polish Brand Focused on Diversity

People of Color is a Black owned nail polish brand founded by Jacqueline Carrington.

She was inspired to start her business after seeing her then 3-year-old daughter return from grandma’s house with her nails painted.

Black owned nail polish

“I didn’t have anything at home to change her nail polish color and keep up with her new interest. It rekindled my interest and reminded me of when I was a kid and skipped wearing nail polish because I played basketball and never saw nail polish shown on brown hands.”

Black owned nail polish

When Jacqueline went online to search for nail polish, she was shocked to see things hadn’t changed in terms of representation.

“I wanted to create a nail polish brand that picked out colors that complemented the various shades of brown skin as the first thought, not an afterthought. As I grew deeper into our values, it became our mission to celebrate and represent people of color from all over the world by telling our stories through nail polish collections. I named the brand People of Color to literally represent us from all over the world, and figuratively because we all live in a world of color!”

Black owned nail polish

What goes into color selection?

We use the majority of our nail polish collection to tell people of color stories from all over the world. When a theme comes to mind, the stories and inspiration pertaining to the collection theme are what lead us to the chosen colors.

Each color then has a story and meaning behind it. We have done collections to celebrate the impact of Black culture in America, with a collection called For the Culture, with colors like Around the Way Girl (lime green) and Soul Glo (glowy orange).

We celebrated women of color queens with a collection called the Queen collection, with colors inspired by and named after queens Moremi, Lili’uokalani, Makeda, Rani Chennamma, and Anacaona.

We strive to tell authentic stories and will utilize our community to sometimes work with co-curators from a specific culture/background to share their stories and select colors and polish names. 

Black owned nail polish

What business skills do you wish you could master overnight?

Content creation! Oh, the time and energy it takes to curate, create, plan and schedule never-ending content! More than 3 years into running People of Color, and I still feel behind in the world of content creation and trends.

What is one fun fact we should know about you?

Surprisingly, I don’t like chocolate. I’ve never liked the taste or smell of it. That’s made it easy for my husband not to have to buy it during any celebrations or holidays. Lol.

-Tony O. Lawson

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