A Local Brand Made a Glove to Protect Gel Nail Girlies From UV Rays

Miriam Nabil loved her glossy, white-tipped nails as much as any girl perched under a salon lamp on a random Thursday, but after scrolling one too many dermatology reels, she couldn’t shake the thought: what were those little UV bursts doing to her skin?
Her aunt, a cancer survivor who refused to part with her biweekly gel appointments, sealed the deal. “I remember in August 2024, I kept nagging her to wear protective gloves,” Nabil says. “She told me she couldn’t find any she trusted.” The next morning, at her desk at the Ministry of Finance, the financial analyst wasn’t thinking about the fiscal reports. She was deciding on her career shift.
Those first prototypes? “DIY chaos,” Nabil laughs. “Gloves are surprisingly hard to make. Months of broken stitches, awkward fingers, wrong fabrics. It was demotivating, but those mistakes led to the version we have today: fitted, premium, polished.” Gloved comes in three sizes, stitched to fit snugly, stopping just below the nail bed so the polish still cures perfectly. The fabric is lab-tested to block 99.95 percent of UVA and UVB rays. They keep that protection even after multiple washes, one of the few pairs on the market that does. Think of them as medical gear, or as the manicure’s missing step: base coat, colour, top coat, glove.
“I wanted something warm and clean, not clinical,” Nabil says. Gloved is meant to sit next to your polish bottles without looking out of place, to feel like part of the manicure ritual. The fabric is soft, matte, and designed to hug the hand; Nabil calls it “a hug for your skin.”
Where most protective gloves are nylon, prone to losing their UV shield after a wash or two, Gloved was engineered to hold up. We asked Nabil to imagine if Gloved were a person. “She’d be the one in your group chat reminding everyone about SPF before a beach day.”
Some clients now wear Gloved driving, typing, even scrolling by a sunny window. A dermatologist friend swears by them for Cairo’s endless commute glare.
Nabil hopes that five years from now, they’ll be everywhere: stacked in salon drawers like cotton pads, casually slipped on before every cure. For now, they’re just an ambitious little upgrade: a way to keep your gel habit without the nagging thought of UV damage sitting under the surface.