let your fingers do the talking

FORGET tasteful French manicures or last year's short, dark Dietrichesque Vampish nails. Nail art, once a disastrous Seventies disco fad, is back, with the hippest nails sporting everything from tacky gold transfers to feathers, rhinestones, even chains. Formerly confined to the trashiest of trailer trash, nail art is now being sported by a new generation of Seventies revivalists. "Recently it's all the rage with clubbers and party girls ," says Pansy Alexander, 42, owner of the salon Nails to Go.

Tacky talons instantly put you in the same league as all the other Great Nail Queens: Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, Roberta Flack. Big women with big voices, big hair and big everything.

The average job at nail art - lilac and gold hearts, say - will set you back around pounds 125; pounds 55 for the baked-on false tips and then pounds 7 a nail for artwork. Both the nails and the artwork should last around two months.

8 Nails To Go, Hyper Hyper, 26-40 High Street Kensington, London, W8 (0171 795 6333).