Is anyone else perplexed by nail varnish? I know it’s not right to give too much headroom to these things. But then, grey nail varnish isn’t right. Like blue food, it defies all the laws of nature. It looks downright unhealthy, like a body gently rotting from within.

Admittedly, people levelled the same kind of accusation at Rouge Noir when it first became a hit back in the Nineties, although the principal case against the defendant rested on its knack of making fingers look as though they’d been involved in some kind of bloody car accident – three days ago. A decade on, Rouge Noir is a classic, which goes to show that while Morgue Chic is chilling, it has a certain Gothic impact.

The same could happen with grey nail varnish although, brutally speaking, it lacks the car-crash drama of Rouge Noir and looks more like a case of depleted silica stores. Then again, grey has become the default colour setting in many wardrobes, giving black a run for its money. Why, in an age of washing machines and non-iron modal, have we become a civilisation that seems to feel most comfortable in darkish monochrome that doesn’t need washing too often? Maybe it’s the chameleon effect of urbanisation on the human soul: surround yourself in concrete; dress like concrete. Grey nail polish could just be the final, cockroachy touch.

Except I note that in the past few weeks, blue, emerald and yellow nail polishes are mounting a challenge to grey’s supremacy. Not on my toes they won’t be, but that’s because I remember them from last time round, in the late Nineties, when the aptly named Urban Decay brought out a range of pus-inspired colours that took the morgue theme to its outer limits. I always thought wacky nail varnish, especially on toes, was the rebellion of choice for goody two-shoes and the middle-aged, who wanted to look totally crazee but liked to spread-bet the risk.

That doesn’t alter the fact that, although there have been some pretty extreme fashion moments throughout history, from codpieces to crinolines, it’s the chandelier-scraping, catchy-on-fire hair and arsenic-and-lead make-up that invariably supply the truly transcendent freak factor to subsequent generations. We may be there already, with the current trend for immobile, orange faces, which will cause bafflement and revulsion in our great-grandchildren.

In the meantime, perhaps grey polish is a pale harbinger of a new era at the beauty counter. Bags, heels, skinny jeans, full skirts have all gone about as far as they can go. Next winter, clotheswise, there isn’t that much to scare, or even mildly antagonise, the horses. So maybe for a season or two it will be down to weird-coloured toes and Amy Winehouse’s hair to keep up the momentum that fashion needs to exist.

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