Around 600 BC during the Zhou Dynasty. , the royal house had a preference for the colors gold and silver. However, it would eventually transition to red and black. During the Ming Dynasty, nail polish was often made from a mixture including beeswax, egg whites, gelatin, vegetable dyes, and gum Arabic.
By the turn of the 9th century, nails were tinted with scented red oils, and polished or buffed with a chamois cloth, rather than simply polished.
In 1300 BC, the color of the nail polish symbolized the ranking of social class each individual earned: gold and silver were considered to be the royal colors; however, were later changed to black and red. The lower classes would wear pale colors and when the high society color changed to red, that is the color Cleopatra would often wear.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people 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 people during this period painted their nails with an air brush. After the creation of automobile paint, Cutex produced the first modern nail polish in 1917 with the introduction of colored nail glosses.
Synthetic nail polish was introduced around the 1920s in Paris
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