Is there going to be a recession this year? Economists have been umm-ing and ahh-ing and crunching the numbers, but the answer could be at the tip of your fingers. According to various expert sources (influencers on TikTok), a wobbly economy means people are ditching elaborate and expensive manicures for more understated styles. Cue numerous headlines about “recession nails”.
When I first saw these headlines, I felt pretty smug. An inadvertent trendsetter, I have been rocking recession nails for the past decade now. Except I have been calling them “freelance lesbian nails”. Or, alternatively, “harried parent nails”. Then I read past the headlines and was no longer quite so smug. Turns out that the trend doesn’t mean frantically cutting your nails with a cheap clipper while yelling “BE THERE IN A MINUTE!” to your four-year-old who has discovered that there is leftover cake in the freezer. It means, from what I can gather, a neutral pink shade on manicured squoval (square-oval) nails that aren’t super-long but are still very polished.
