Pro Nail Princesa Keeps Dallas' Nail Game Tight
This is the beginning of our new series on Dallas nail artists, and we're starting if off with a woman who will be difficult to top, Vanessa Quilantan. She's known internationally as Pro Nail Princesa and will be featured in the upcoming documentary, Nailgasm.
Nail art by Pro Nail Princesa, Photograph by Catherine Downes
She'll have her own studio someday, there's no doubt. It's rare to meet a woman as driven, talented and masterful at self-promotion as Pro Nail Princessa, but for now Vanessa's salon is wherever it needs to be. 
Photo by Catherine Downes
Local arts developers, Green Bandana, had Quilantan set up shop at one of their Summertime parties, and Parade of Flesh now invites her out to dip tips at rap shows. Today, she's working out of her bedroom, a feminine hideaway bursting with animal prints. She's consulting two women on their nail game while a couple of men flutter around her. The boys happily deliver mimosas to the guests and adjust the playlist and volume as V sees fit. There's a magnatism to her, and its powerful enough to keep life and movement active within this hive.
Quilantan wasn't always acrylic royalty. She got into nails until after high school when she and her best girlfriends got an apartment. "It started becoming this fun thing for us to do together," she says. "We'd meet up in the living room after work, do our nails and talk about our days." But it was that initial application of Pro Nails that gave her a personal union with the artform.
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