A woman in the northern German city of Hamburg has been collecting nail polish for more than 20 years. Her apartment is filled with the bottles, earning her the title of largest collection in the world.
Pink, purple, shades of neon, with glitter or tiny hearts, or even a picture of a princess on the bottle — nail polish comes in endless varieties. And Carolin Gorra seems to have them all.
Walk into her ground-floor flat in Hamburg’s Niendorf district, and you’ll see shelves packed with neat rows of bottles against almost every wall. There are exactly 11,027 bottles — as recently confirmed by two lawyers. At the end of 2018, they reported back to the German Record Institute, confirming Gorra’s collection as the biggest in the world.
The 39-year-old trained economist, originally from the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has loved nail polish since her childhood. She bought her first bottle when she was 15 or 16, she recalls. “At the time, you could finally get blue nail polish. I think it only cost US$1. But I was just super happy.”
Her first two bottles still occupy a special place in her collection — they stand on a shelf in the living room, next to the special editions (a blown glass bottle with a silver label) and historic samples from the 1920s.
“Back then, the consistency was more like lip gloss or chalk,” she says. “It was better for women not to use their fingers, otherwise it would rub straight off.”
We have the car industry to thank for the fact that nail polish has since become an everyday item, according to Gorra: The development of new colours for car finishes also led to an explosion in new nail polish colours.
The first commercial nail polish hit shops in 1932, developed by brothers Charles and Joseph Revson and chemist Charles Lachmann — who later went on to found the cosmetics firm Revlon.
The huge variety available today becomes obvious in Gorra’s collection. There is practically no limit to the number of shades and colours on offer.
In the bathroom, the focus is on children’s nail polish. The walls are lined with colourful bottles decorated with pictures of Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck, trolls, Disney castles, dogs, cats and other animals.
Whether the living room, bedroom, bathroom, dressing room or hallway, in almost every room in the apartment, there are shelves packed wall-to-wall with bottles and other accessories — shoes that have been decorated with nail polish, nail stickers, nail polish perfume bottles, pens and USB sticks.
“Only the guest bedroom, the guest bathroom and the kitchen are nail polish-free,” Gorra says.
She says her boyfriend, whom she’s been with for 18 years, doesn’t have a problem with her obsession. “He knew what he was getting into!”
In spite of the world record, Gorra says she is nowhere near done collecting. She’s constantly searching the internet, drug stores and supermarkets for new nail polish varieties.
“The main thing I’m looking for is special editions,” she says. “But the colours have been pretty boring this winter.”
In fact, German manufacturers are generally quite conservative with their colours, she says – there’s a much bigger variety in the US. That’s why she always asks friends and acquaintances to bring back a couple of bottles from their holidays.
“I have nail polish from 54 countries, so there are still quite a few missing.”
Gorra spends US$110 to US$220 a month on new bottles. “The collection is worth about the same as a small car,” she reckons.
According to Germany’s Association of Cosmetic Product Distributors, nail polish occupies about 10 per cent of the decorative cosmetics market in the country.
“The fact that someone collects nail polish shows in itself the fascination the product can hold for some people,” says Martin Ruppmann, head of the association.
He’s convinced Gorra won’t run out of polishes to collect any time soon. “All the big cosmetics firms sell nail polish, mostly in about 20 to 30 colours, and they introduce new shades every year. When you look at it that way, the collection doesn’t seem quite so huge.”
Gorra likes bright colours best. Depending on her mood that morning, she’ll choose either neon orange, bright blue or a juicy lemon yellow. “Red or discreet — that’s not my thing,” she says.
She normally switches to a new colour every two days or so. “More than three days with the same colour? I can’t do that.”
Around 10 per cent of her collection has actually ended up on her fingers, she says – the rest is just for show.
In recent years, Instagram has given Gorra a new opportunity to share her passion with the world. Every day, when she takes her dog for a walk, she’ll bring along a couple of bottles and photograph them with mushrooms, leaves, moss or other pretty backdrops.
“As long as it’s not boring!”
Her dream is to run a small museum with a cafe. She’s even come up with a name — Nagellack Wunderland, or “Nail Polish Wonderland.”
In May, she will get a taste for what that might be like — her collection will be going on show for several months in a museum in the municipality of Schoenwalde am Bungsberg. – dpa
