Plaid nails have moved from a December novelty to the first thing people ask for once the mornings turn cool. Who What Wear traced the current wave back to the jelly tartan set Kylie Jenner wore in late 2025, and it has been building since, mostly in mocha, espresso and cream rather than the red-and-green version everyone remembers. What follows is ten sets we photographed in that palette, running from barely-there tartan to full argyle, with bows, polka dots and a little animal print along...

The magnet does the heavy lifting. Every so often a manicure comes along that photographs better than it has any right to. Velvet cat-eye is that manicure. Tilt your hand and a band of light slides across the nail like a stripe of light down a bolt of velvet, then disappears when you tilt it back. It is a full nail-art moment that requires no nail art at all. The effect comes out of a bottle of magnetic gel. "I create the look using 'cat eye' gel, which is essentially a gel polish with...

Dark cherry nails have an origin story, which is more than most manicures can claim. In 1994, Karl Lagerfeld asked Chanel's director of makeup creation, Dominique Moncourtois, for a polish dark enough to register in the black-and-white photographs he was shooting for the spring 1995 collection. Moncourtois mixed a red so deep it read as black. They called it Rouge Noir, sold in the States as Vamp. It walked the fall runway, sold out when it reached counters, and set the template every dark...