(From the ft.com) So there’s Lady Gaga in rhinestones on the cover of her LoveGame single, sporting metallic silver nails and launching a trend that spawned thousands of copycat manicures. The now-ubiquitous Minx adhesive foil nail wraps, available in myriad colours and patterns, are also favoured by fellow celebrities Beyoncé and Scarlett Johansson, and have featured on the catwalk at Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. When it comes to creating a cosmetic fad, so far, so normal.

What is not so typical, however, is where this fad originated pre-Gaga: in the car industry. Here’s the story: in 2006 California-based Janice Jordan, owner of a graphics business supplying adhesive decals for racing cars, grew fed up with the damage that daily tasks inflicted on her manicure (and her nails). It occurred to her that similar technology could be used to create a solid nail coating that would both protect nails and decorate them. “It took two years of talking to engineers and looking at adhesives that, unlike existing nail glues, wouldn’t damage the nail,” she says.

The result took Jordan out of her graphics workshop and into the global beauty business (along with her co-founder Dawn Lynch Goodwin). Her tale is simply the most recent example of the way beauty has been tapping into other industries’ know-how since 1922, when the first modern nail varnishes were created.

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