Is the manicure dead? Why bare nails are trending

The nail in the coffin.

Recently the hosts of my favourite podcast After Work Drinks posed a question I too had wondered recently: is the manicure dead? While they shared how getting a manicure gives them the ick these days, I stared down at my bare nails. I’d recently meticulously picked Barbie pink SNS off of them (the trailer got me, okay) to reveal their natural state underneath.

It did strike me as odd at the time that my pink claws suddenly felt so suffocating, given I would regularly scrape together my last $45 to head to a nail salon with something like ‘coco’ or ‘pearl’ in its name a few years ago. I’d be shouted at to sit down in a row of eight other women and my nails would be poked and prodded with medical-looking tools, all to walk out with a shiny lacquer of polish before a big weekend.

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Now, however, I feel more stylish showing up to plans with bare, clean nails with nothing more than a lick of clear, shiny top coat. When I look around my office, at the girl next to me on the train and at the pub, I can see I’m not the only one ditching the polish. So, Carrie Bradshaw style, I wonder, is the manicure dead? And if so, what killed it?

If you’ve spent any time on TikTok in the last few years (of course you have) you’d be familiar with the no-makeup makeup trend. At a certain period, my feed was flooded with girls showing me how to apply tinted moisturiser and clear brow gel with the hashtag #cleangirl. Adjacent to this trend was the glazed doughnut nail trend – a pearly, light pink oval-shaped manicure that resembles that of a Krispy Kreme creation, inspired by Hayley Bieber’s ‘effortless’ approach to beauty.

A progression from these trends, where we see copious amounts of time and effort put in for the outcome to be not too far off how you looked from the start, just better, shiner, fresher (or so they say) is the return of natural nails. We’re not talking about ditching the manicure though, in fact, many adopters of this trend are still undergoing the full manicure process, the difference being they’re finishing their nail routine with a barely there, naked nail look. Harper’s Bazaar dubbed this trend the ‘no-icure’ in 2022. Like the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic, the no-icure also grew rapidly in popularity due to its nod to class and status.

The state of the economy has long had the ability to sway how we emulate beauty standards. The skyrocketing sales of lipsticks during the Great Depression were not just a means of finding luxury in small, affordable purchases, but the act of wearing lipstick itself allowed women to present themselves in a certain way to society. The cost of living crisis has seen many of us cut out our little luxuries, but it’s also seen us embodying certain style and beauty habits that express our ability to cope with the ever-rising interest rates unbalanced by lack of pay raises.

The clean beauty trend has been criticised for being inherently racist and classist, with the aesthetic being geared towards predominantly Western features, and oozing ‘effortlessly cool’, while actually requiring a considerable financial investment to maintain. Many have compared the style of clean girl to the old money or quiet luxury aesthetic, where wearers are subtle and refined in expressing their wealth as opposed to being loud or flashy. 

Politics and economics aside, a subtle naked nail look is undeniably less maintenance than the SNS French tips that have been trending for the past few years. The term time poverty was popularised in 2020 when we first started to emerge from the global pandemic and we began to re-introduce the stresses of the daily grind; the sense that we’re a time-poor society has stuck around since. 

We’re all finding life hacks to make our evenly allotted 24 hours feel more like 48, and for some, that means cutting out things like sitting in a salon for two hours getting a mani-pedi. The pandemic also saw the rise of at-home beauty treatments, which saw an influx of easy DIY nail kits all over social media and in our kitchen junk drawers. The no-icure, despite still being a manicure, is actually quite achievable from the comfort of our own living rooms.

And a natural colour doesn’t look quite as obvious as nail art or colour when growing out, which means less frequent trips to the salon, and more time to take ice baths or journal or whatever the hell it is we’re supposed to be doing according to the latest wellness guru.

So is the manicure dead? Well, not quite. The no-icure has clawed its way into recent fashion weeks and red carpet events, but many of us still cherish the ritual of picking out our next nail colour or art and visiting our favourite salon to gasbag for hours on end with our trusted nail artists.

Whether a fresh coat of brightly coloured SNS is about to become the latest victim of the phrase ‘cheugy’ remains to be seen, but whether you opt for nude or bright purple, you should do whatever gets you through these dark-$7.50-latte times.

For advice on strengthening your natural nails, head here.