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When Jessica Blumenthal was pregnant with her second child two years ago, her standing monthly nail salon appointment had to go. But when Blumenthal, then VP of brand and innovation at the Cameron Diaz co-founded wine brand Avaline, sought options for at-home manicures, she was left uninspired.
“I was surprised by what the nailcare market looked like,” said Blumenthal, who was also a founding executive at makeup and skincare brands Merit and Versed. “Having built brands across cosmetics and skincare, I was used to digitally native brands that have close relationships with their consumers and that are quite sophisticated in terms of tone — and there was a clear white space for something similar in nailcare.”
That sparked the idea for Celisse, the direct-to-consumer (DTC) nailcare brand launching on Wednesday with a tightly edited assortment of seven products, including three colour polishes, a top coat, a nail and cuticle serum, and nail tools like a file and a buffer, which are aesthetically designed for display on the counter rather than hidden in a drawer. Straddling the space between popular mass-market brands like OPI and luxury players like Chanel, the individual products are all under $22, while the full set retails at $84. Every first order also comes with a 20-page Celisse Method Manual, aiming to take the guesswork out of nailcare, whether that’s shaping, nourishing or painting.
Inspired by Cutex branding and manuals from the 1920s, as well as her mom’s nail routine as a kid, Blumenthal’s goal is to make at-home nails not just easier and commonplace again, but aspirational. “If I’m not going to go to the salon and I’m going to engage with this product at home, then I want it to feel like a little treat,” she says.
The launch is well timed, says Larissa Jensen, a global beauty industry advisor at Circana. Despite the ever-growing list of salon treatments, a recent Circana survey found that 42 per cent of women looking to pull back on spending are planning to do so in beauty services. And despite the sales of mass-market nail products dipping in the first half of 2025, the prestige channel grew by 4 per cent. That larger decline “could be a result of drugstores’ underperformance and displays being locked”, says Jensen. “Distribution channels can play a key role in brand performance these days.”
Celisse’s barely-there pink and nude shades, as well as its focus on nail health more broadly, fits well with the rising popularity of bare or minimal nails after years of maximalist nail trends like nail art, gels and acrylic dominating the category. Tariro Makoni, author of the popular Trademarked Substack, went viral on the platform for a piece exploring what your manicure says about you, in which she created a nail-status hierarchy that placed the bare nail at the top of the list, deeming it the most luxurious. Regular polish was right behind it as the preference of “the leisure class”, while anything requiring more time and effort slid down the status ladder.
While OTT trends like “junk” nails are losing steam, interest in nailcare itself is actually rising, says Addison Cain, a senior insights and marketing lead at Spate. Nailcare routines — which require products for things like nail prep and cuticle care — have grown 21.8 per cent year-on-year in the Spate Popularity Index, which shows a trend’s performance across TikTok, Instagram and Google Search. “It’s really the result of the skinification of everything,” Cain says, noting that consumers are now building multi-step routines for other parts of their bodies.
To help develop the products, Blumenthal enlisted fashion and celebrity manicurist Holly Falcone as founding creative director and brand manicurist. “I was not a nailcare expert when I started Celisse, I actually didn’t know how to do my own nails,” jokes Blumenthal, “and one thing that I learnt from my time at Avaline was the value of having experts at the table really early on.”
Falcone, who has worked with brands like Glossier and Sandy Liang and was a new mum herself, immediately connected with the vision. “I was also looking for at-home beauty solutions, and you can find so many today, but there was no elevated, simple, complete nail system,” she says. Plus, Falcone’s on-set experience familiarised her with the many questions people have about doing their own nails: how do you file them properly? What do you do with your cuticles? How can you prevent breakage?
There were some great luxury polishes out there, but no guidance on what to do before and after using them. Celisse, Falcone says, was looking at the entire “lifestyle” of having nails, whether that means a full manicure, or just a buff and shine on your way out the door. That’s not a conversation a lot of brands want to have, she explains, because it’s not all centred on buying new products.
“It’s such an oversaturated market and everything’s promising to deliver salon results without the education component,” Falcone says. “I think [what the consumer really needs is] someone just to get on their level and say, ‘Here, let me make this easy for you.’”
Blumenthal and Falcone will be bringing the Celisse Method Manual to life on social media, with both their own and user-generated content showcasing consumers’ spins on the Celisse Method. But the duo are much more excited about creating a community offline; a big part of what made Blumenthal’s time at Avaline, which throws regular tasting events, a success. “We’re bombarded with video content all the time, and every time I open Instagram I’m like, why am I here — this place is awful,” says Blumenthal.
Both the printed manual and brand-partnered community events lean further into what the pair believe people are craving right now: an opportunity to log off and connect with yourself or others beyond a screen. “Even just doing my nails myself feels empowering in a time when all friction is removed and you can have someone else do everything for you,” says Blumenthal.
Another thing Celisse is doing differently than many DTC brands of yore is not courting investors. “I believe in the current moment, raising outside capital and the growth expectations around that are leading brands to adopt tactics that are not aligned with building a brand with longevity and integrity,” explains Blumenthal. “That’s certainly not always the case, but I want to focus on profitable growth, which I know is possible with strong market fit and the right expectations.”
In keeping with the brand’s less-is-more ethos, a handful of complimentary manicure products will slowly roll out in 2026. But for now, Blumenthal and Falcone are looking for a strong emotional reaction from the consumer and a better sense of their product-market fit.
Blumenthal, who’s previously worked for brands that have headed straight into retail, is excited to simply launch, listen and pivot if necessary. “This year is really about setting the foundation, and while I hope Celisse V1 is exactly what the customer is looking for, I’m also excited to get that in-market feedback and evolve the brand as we go,” she says.
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