When did bare nails become a status symbol?

In the opening scene of FX’s Love Story (2026), Carolyn Bessette Kennedy is getting her nails done. Paparazzi press against the window, camera flashes reflecting off her trademark blonde hair and freshly painted nails: a cherry polish that hums with defiance.

It is the manicure of a woman who, not long ago, was an independent Calvin Klein publicist living on her own terms.

But for this event, a Kennedy family wedding, she changes her mind – she looks down at her hands with a defeated expression and asks the nail technician to start over: Switch it to a neutral.

Though the show, which was released in 2026, is set in the 1990s, the nude or minimal nail aesthetic has made it to runways and streetwear in 2026.

Nail salons and polish brands have reported growing preferences for nude and pink polish, while some people are skipping polish altogether.

For some, the trend has become a rallying cry against complex beauty rituals – but for others, it’s a way for the privileged few to show their wealth (in Love Story, the nude nails were seen as a better fit for a Kennedy function).

Valeria Lipovetsky, an influencer, stopped doing her nails regularly two years ago. “My life quality has improved substantially since I stopped doing my nails,” she said, adding she had more brain capacity and more time. The video she posted in 2025 about her decision has been viewed more than three million times and has seen a resurgence in shares and views lately.

Vivian Tu, a financial content creator who used to work at J.P. Morgan, was inspired to ditch her nail routine, too. “Sitting in a salon for 90 minutes does not feel like a good use of my time,” she said.

Convenience is part of the pitch that Katia Beauchamp is making.

“Keeping my nails bare gives me so much freedom to always feel ready, or minutes away from feeling ready,” she said. Beauchamp, the former CEO of Victoria Beckham Beauty and Birchbox co-founder, will be launching Buff Beauty, a brand built around the bare nail, this summer.

The look has become a status symbol, for everyone from influencers like Alix Earle, Paige Lorenze and Tinx, who all wore it in recent weeks, to perennial “It girls” like Zoe Kravitz and the Olsen twins, to Marc Jacobs, who sent models down a runway in 2026 with nude nails at New York Fashion Week.

Manicurist Jin Soon Choi prepped models’ nails backstage with nothing but cuticle oil and hand cream. Minutes before the show, Jacobs asked her to cut the nails even shorter. “I’ve been doing a lot of minimalistic, natural, healthy-looking nails,” she said.

Primp & Polish, a nail salon with four locations in New York, said roughly half of its clients now request natural or neutral styles, which is a reversal from a year ago, when about 70 per cent of clients wanted “bolder colours and more complex colourful designs”.

Though nudes and pinks have long been popular, Isabelle Marlow, director of colour design and product development for Essie, said: “This year, we really saw the popularity of sheer and semi-sheer soft pinks and milky neutrals grow.”

The nude nail trend, paradoxically, does not necessarily mean skipping the salon. There are the barely there options that Choi calls the “invisible French manicure”, and there are also nail treatments such as nail strengtheners, cuticle oils and serums, a market that is projected to reach US$5.1 billion (S$6.6 billion) by 2030, according to Grand View Research.

Politics of ‘clean girl’

Pristine, unpainted hands have long signalled a life of leisure. It is a lineage of restraint that stretches from royal protocols to the WASPy settings that Love Story depicted. In recent years, as the “clean girl” aesthetic grew, minimal nails have become increasingly popular.

But while social media and Substacks have been exalting bare nails, commenters have been quick to point out classism and exclusion. Like the “clean-girl” aesthetic, it can be another way to subtly counter-signal. “People want to create the illusion that they are not putting in hours of work,” said Kristina Rodulfo, a beauty editor and writer of the newsletter Pearl.

Critics argued that elevating the bare nail meant looking down on elaborate nail art traditions rooted in black and immigrant communities.

“It’s respectability politics at the end of the day and black women know this,” said Cyndia Robinson, who owns Cure Nailhouse in Detroit. “We’ve been dealing with this our entire lives. We’ve been told our hair, nails, bodies, clothes are too much.”

She emphasised that salons are about more than beauty. Nail salons, she said, can be spaces where culture is “protected and passed down”.

“When we decide that these spaces don’t matter,” she added, “we lose rooms where women survive and take care of each other.”

Ameya Okamoto, a Japanese-Taiwanese New York-based nail artist whose Smithsonian collaboration explored nail art through the lens of Asian American history, saw the elevation of neutral nails as a kind of erasure.

“The labelling of self-expression as trashy or lower-class is that exact same reason why people label braids as unprofessional, or your food as stinky,” she said.

Like beauty, effort is in the eye of the beholder. As Robinson put it: “Effortless, to me, means showing up as yourself. It’s honouring myself, my legacy, my culture.” NYTIMES