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If you're a woman who cares about the latest fashion trends and wants to look ultra chic and totally cool, the answer is at your fingertips.

Chipped nail polish.

According to a recent article I read in The New York Times Styles section, chipped fingernail polish is all the rage in the Goyard bag-Louboutin shoes set. I don't know what a Goyard bag or a Louboutin shoe is, but if the New York Times is writing about them in its Styles section, they're probably not on sale at Wal-Mart.

As the story related:

" ... having streaked, chipped or just plain grotty nail polish no longer suggests drug addiction, manual labor or pure laziness. Like untied high tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, it's now part of a deliberate look."

Nails previously known as "unsightly," in other words, have become the fashion-conscious woman's version of unshaven cheeks. They are the response to Dr. McDreamy, the latest American Idol and all those other guys who somehow have managed to convince people that having a three-day growth of whiskers is something they've done on purpose because it makes them look sexy and not as if they've just been bailed out after a weekend in the drunk tank.

"Before, when nail polish was chipped, you absolutely had to run and get it fixed," said Ji Baek, the owner of the Rescue Beauty Lounge and a manicure doyenne who has noticed the Olsens and Lindsay Lohan with less-than-impeccable polish," the Times article reported. Now, clients like hers are "wearing perfectly tailored clothes, they have $5,000 bags and equally fabulous shoes, but their nails are chipped and they're saying, 'I don't care.' They don't want to be too perfect."

Maybe I'm not qualified to comment, because not being too perfect always has come naturally to me. But a lot of people seem to have to work too hard and spend too much money to get there. Jeans that have rips in the knees cost more than jeans that don't. Ratty-looking gym shoes our mothers threw away when they looked like that cost more than a pair that looks new.

Footwear that once cost $2.99 and was designed to be worn in the shower or at the beach, now can cost $400 and they flip flop their way to work and just about everywhere else. Recently, I was at a wedding where the bride wore a pair under her gown at the reception. A young female guest assured me that "lots of brides are doing that."

A co-worker hypothesizes that all this slovenliness has something to do with technology. My guess is that it's just a way for people who worry about being in style to say, "I'm so cool, I don't even have to try to be too perfect." Which certainly is their right. But I keep wondering where it will end. In their efforts to look not too perfect, will they become too cool to bathe? Too cool to brush their teeth? Too cool to zip up their flies?

I have no idea.

But here's my guess about the chipped-nail thing: Before long, women will be going to fancy nail salons and paying $25 to have their nails professionally chipped for them.

Contact this writer at (937) 225-2439 or at dlstewart@DaytonDaily News.com.

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