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When Rosalía stopped by the Vogue offices earlier this week wearing a colorful, boldly printed anime-inspired set by Korean streetwear brand Skoot, she made sure she had the nails to match. For the Catalan singer, that meant tapping Miami-based Colombian-Ecuadorian nail artist Kro Vargas, also known as @Krocaine, for some kaleidoscopic pop art claws. The pair, who’s worked together since Rosalía slid into Vargas’s DMs back in 2018, has a natural synergy that manifests into exaggerated tips drenched in high-octane pastels and iconography.
“Rosalía sent me a picture of the dress she was wearing and told me I could do whatever I wanted as long as it matched,” explains Vargas, 28, clarifying that the avant-pop performer did have one small request, which was to incorporate the nail artist’s signature “sexy girl” motif. “I love incorporating female bodies in my designs because it’s one of the many ways I can live vicariously through my nail art,” she explains. “I can paint a woman dressed however I want, with whatever accessories, with whatever tattoos.” Set amidst a hazy backdrop of desaturated blues, greens, and lavender, as well as winding flames, the woman pictured on Rosalía’s tips has a bodacious frame and is clad in a fuchsia Louis Vuitton monogram print. “Growing up, brand iconology was the trend,” says Krocaine, who was born in Queens, New York, and raised in Miami. “It’s nostalgic for me to bring these prints back into my designs.”
Other signatures that can be found in Krocaine’s designs, which typically take one to three hours to create, include sparkles, barbed wires, script lettering, and butterflies—the latter serving as a kind of metaphor for living and creating without limitations. “It [represents] expression and freedom,” she explains. “I can change the butterfly any way I want, such as adding my signature pierced wings.” Vargas first fell in love with nail art when she and her grandmother would go get manicures together in Sunnyside, Queens. “In elementary school, I always walked around with a white sterilite manicure box and I’d charge my family members $5 for manicures,” she laughs. “I have been doing my own nails and designs for a really long time and decided right after high school that I wanted to showcase my art through nails.”
Vargas’s boundless creativity, and the painstaking attention to detail she pays to every facet of a design, has made her a fixture on the Instagram nail art scene (with over 100,000 followers), as well as an in-demand collaborator for other musicians such as rappers Rico Nasty and La Goony Chonga. “Artists are finding different ways to express themselves,” she says, adding that she attracts a wide range of clientele. “No matter what gender [someone identifies as], our youth is becoming more progressive and nail art is just another form of expression. The choice to wear polish doesn’t define who you are as a person—and I think society is starting to realize this.”
As Vargas’s next-level nail creations continue to pervade the worlds of music, she hopes to continue exploring new mediums, having just directed La Goony Chonga’s forthcoming “Pensamientos” music video. “With nails I’m a bit limited as to who can experience my art outside of the Miami area, so I want to make sure people all over the world can enjoy it by embracing different forms of it.” Considering that Vargas’s work already pushes the limits of the tiniest canvas, there’s no telling what she’ll serve up next.