It began with a bottle of Essie nail polish within the shade L’Orangerie. Again in 2020, Shana Eichenberg, the creator behind the favored TikTok account Vintage Dusties, was attempting to up her at-home manicure recreation—and this orange-y crimson hue was one of many bottles in her smaller assortment of polishes. Upon nearer inspection, she realized it was not like the trendy Essie bottles she’d been utilizing.
“It didn’t have the present embossment; it had a distinct label,” Eichenberg tells Attract. As a self-described hyperfixator—who additionally has an archaeology diploma—she was wanting to know what period of Essie the bottle was from. When she tried to seek out primary details about the colour on-line, her efforts have been futile.
“There have been completely no swatches of [L’Orangerie] on-line,” she says. That lack of intel impressed her to begin documenting the historical past of different possibly-forgotten nail polishes. “I wished to offer that coloration, and others, a bit footprint on the web.”
4 years later, Eichenberg’s turn out to be one thing of a famous archivist within the classic nail polish area. Beneath the Classic Dusties deal with, her metier is discovering, reviving, and making use of enamels from way back to the Nineteen Twenties. Even her youngest polishes are greater than a decade previous.
TikTok content material
This content material will also be seen on the positioning it originates from.
It’s a distinct segment subject, however area of interest matters can excel on social media—and Eichenberg is pleased to have discovered her individuals. “As an introvert, I thrive on-line,” she says. “I don’t must be weak. I can put what I would like on the market. But in addition preserve what I wish to preserve. It’s been actually enjoyable.”
Such content material is catnip for her followers, lots of whom get pleasure from recalling less complicated occasions when Moist ‘n Wild polishes have been solely $1. “Millennials are nostalgic for his or her youthful years,” Eichenberg says. “Then there’s Gen Z, who’re nostalgic for occasions they did not even dwell in.”
Millennials have been particularly engaged with certainly one of her movies this previous July when she posted her nails carrying Arduous Sweet’s Frigid—the precise shade of icy blue Lindsay Lohan wore as Hallie within the 1998 remake of The Guardian Entice. The episode, as Eichenberg calls it, delighted her viewers. “Now THIS is journalism,” one commented, whereas others begged her to discover a dupe for the long-gone shade.