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Welcome to We Did It For Science, a newly-revived, semi-regular feature in which we offer ourselves up as retail, beauty, or health guinea pigs—all for your benefit.
Our power colors in nail art form.
Although we were already fans of stylish new Mid-City nail studio, Enamel Diction, our inner nu-age flower child couldn't help but get a little excited when we heard that color astrology was added to its services menu. At Racked, we consider ourselves rational, science-believing folk, ones who take Cosmopolitan horoscopes with a grain of salt—but occasionally, we suffer lapses of executive decision-making on, say, choosing the color of our manicure. Given our penchant for retail risk-taking and our curiosity for the arcane, we decided to put all that stuff from Psych 101 and Astronomy 101 to the test and get our first-ever chart reading, and (full disclosure!) maybe get a free mani out of it, too.
Enter the salon's in-house astrologist, Rose Theodora, who offers one-on-one astrological readings and reveals your power colors based on your birth chart. She's not the wand-waving charlatan that skeptics would expect; her CV boasts degrees in neuroscience and art history from UCLA, her grandfather worked for NASA, and she's been at this since she was eight years old. In a nutshell, she sorta blew our minds with her creepishly accurate assessment of our entire life.
Rose reads our birth charts.
Before meeting up at Enamel Diction, Theodora asked that we email her the exact time and location that we were born. For reference, this writer's a Virgo on the cusp of Libra, if that means anything. At the reading, she began by explaining why there's no enlightenment in the back pages Cosmo.
"Horoscopes as we know them—the tiny paragraph in the back of fashion magazines speaking to the one-million-plus people that share your same sun sign—are actually intended for your rising sign, [which is] based on your time of birth, and not your sun sign, [which is] based on the day you were born," she explains.
"But no one ever tells you that—If people subscribe to horoscopes for their sun sign, then at best they're a placebo. So I understand why some people are skeptical about astrology, and I was too until I began studying it."
On to the reading: our chart mapped out what the skies looked like the moment we were born, with symbols of planets and asteroids marked within the houses. And not gonna lie; stuff started flying way above our heads the second Theodora said "Saturn return," so we'd be doing you (and her) an incredible disservice if we tried to rehash it all in amateurish layman's terms.
Basically, and without knowing a word of our life's story, she laid out with freakish precision our relationship with our parents and friends (it's all good), our mental state (maybe get out of our writer-like head more often?), how to best put our at-your-service personality to use, and more that we probably shouldn't disclose because this is The Internet, yo. Anyway, we may or may not have had a completely dumbfounded look on our face at this point—which is also pretty common, Theodora says. She once read birth charts for twins, and they cried.
About those power colors. Theodora handed us a hand-painted color wheel and some nail art suggestions to help us achieve optimal life success. Pink, purple, blue, and black are our jam for boosting creativity (so true); yellows and greens are not so good (hate them anyway), and a touch of silver and gold are good for bringing in more positive vibes (we like shiny things).
We opted for the above purple gel mani with glitter, and we're happy to report we've since received a minimum of one compliment per day on our pretty nails. Which counts for something, since we've had a pretty good week so far and our previously unkempt nails were seriously killing our vibe. The power!
We also asked Theodora what we should avoid when it comes to our wardrobe (she also does style, health, and career readings). "A common mistake that people make is wearing too much of one color," she says. "It may not be the best thing for them depending on what their desired goal is—take romance for example. Someone may be in a total rut and could be for instance wearing gray all of the time, [but] by adding a little playfulness [with a bright color], the person becomes more open and receptive to romance."
She adds that people have a tendency to wear what they're familiar with, "and sometimes wearing the same color all the time isn't beneficial." For instance, someone with an Aries sun sign "may also have Venus and Mars in Aries, so they would feel right at home wearing red, when in actuality this person might be more than assertive and border line aggressive. "It may even rub people the wrong way," she points out, and "wearing blue could do wonders for this person."
With manicures, it's all "about the power of subtlety," Theodora adds. "When wearing a color on your nails, [it's] a really effective way tap into certain areas of your chart."
Our lovely astrologist. She'll be releasing a line of cool nail colors with Enamel Diction soon; stay tuned for more.
Onto the verdict. Would we do it again and recommend it to others? Yes. Did we feel enlightened? Totes.
If you're into it, basic color analysis with a manicure is $65 and in-depth natal chart reading with a manicure is $145. Book an appointment by emailing Rose here, or by calling Enamel Diction at (323) 900-0355 or scheduling an appointment online here.
· Enamel Diction [Official Site]
· Rose Theodora [Official Site]
· Enamel Diction's Luxe Lacquers Prettifying Mid-City's Pico Blvd [Racked]