The quiet return of the buffed nail

Colour forecasting is mostly listening. The shades that arrive in salons in spring were decided in a room eighteen months earlier, and the ones that stay are the ones that turned out to suit more hands than the forecast expected.

The shortlist

Four families are doing the work this season: a warm oxblood, a grey-lilac, a true butter yellow and the perennial sheer pink that outsells all of them combined.

What is quietly leaving

Chrome. Not gone, but no longer the request that fills a Saturday.