Are you looking for some bomb nails but maybe you’re on a budget and don’t have $160 for some boujee nails? Are you looking for someone you can trust to get your nails done right? Here is a person for you, she is local, affordable, an East High junior, and founder House of Luxx, Meredith Mendez.

Meredith Mendez, a 17-year-old nail tech, gets a lot of her inspiration from her mom that does nails in Mexico and her grandma that helped Mendez start out.
“I got Influenced by my mom because she does nails over in Mexico and first in the beginning, I got into all that cosmetology stuff. I enjoyed doing hair, I enjoyed doing nails and my grandma started me off as well. She got me this kit from Walgreens, and I would just do my nails and her nails, she would let me practice on her all the time so I kind of just got influenced by that. I started to enjoy doing them and thought this could actually be something,” Mendez said.
She also hasn’t been doing nails for the longest but still gets your nails right like she’s been doing them for years. “I just hit one year in January. I did my very first set that got me clients Jan 2, 2022,” Mendez said. Mendez’s week can get pretty full with how many clients she gets, but she does try to balance her time.
How many clients do you have a week?
“It kind of varies because I could get up to three clients a day but usually, I try to put myself at two a day because I do have school and it could just be a lot,” Mendez said.
How difficult was it starting?
“I would say it was very difficult because you have to get everything to be perfect and I would have times where I would just want to be good, and I would want to get straight to it but like there was times where I wanted to give up on doing the nails because it just was not coming out right and everything. It was a lot of work and I never imagined myself taking clients, so it was a big change, more like something you have to adapt to,” Mendez said. How did you feel when you encountered your first client that wasn’t family?
“I was a very shy person before I even started doing nails, that’s one of my main things I am still working on because as a teenager that’s still in school, I’m not too social, so it was awkward but the more clients that I get the more I open up to my clients and make them feel comfortable,” Mendez said.
Do you want this to be your career or is this just a hobby for you right now?
“Honestly as of right now, I do want this to be my career once I’m out of high school. I do want to go to cosmetology school and get my license for my nails. I don’t think my dream is to open up a salon, I think I want to just get my own studio and just be myself but if I do go to cosmetology school, I do also want to learn how to be a barber and I’m also looking into how to do lash extensions,” Mendez said.
Lastly, Overall, have you been having fun doing nails?
“Yes, I feel like if it’s something I didn’t enjoy I would have given up and long time ago but its very fun to do for me it’s like my form of therapy, it’s therapeutic,” Mendez said.