It felt frantic. Fevered. From beneath the stockpiles of hand sanitiser and shelf-stable food, an urgent, existential question emerged. What will become of our fingernails? “People were in panic mode,” Mazz Hanna, a celebrity manicurist and founder of a namesake beauty brand, said of the pandemic-related salon closures mandated in March — panic fuelled by a subsequent flurry of at-home tutorials. How to give yourself a manicure. How to polish your toes to perfection. How to remove gels and acrylics, but also, how to apply them again. How to buff, file, shape and shine.
The DIY content kept coming, constant and crazed — did we do anything other than our nails before the coronavirus? — and then, it calmed.
“I think people went through another phase,” Hanna said. Isolation inspired introspection. Anxiety gave way to acceptance. As life in quasi-quarantine began to feel normal, naked nails did, too. Now, salons are back in (socially distanced) business, but some former polish devotees are opting to go without, and noticing naturally beautiful nails as a result.
Mallika Kalwani, 25, a founder of Avvai Beauty, used to get a manicure every two weeks. Always the same salon, always the same shade of red. “I haven’t got my nails done since March,” she said. “After a while, I got used to the idea of not having manicured nails, especially when I noticed they were looking much healthier.”
Makeup artist Khira Karam, 41, hasn’t had a pedicure since February. “I like the way my actual nails look now,” she said.
This story is from the December 2020 edition of T Singapore: The New York Times Style Magazine.
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This story is from the December 2020 edition of T Singapore: The New York Times Style Magazine.
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