A Bottle of the $6 Nail Polish Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton Love Sells Every Minute

With every minute that passes, 250 babies are born, 11,319 UPS packages are delivered (just not mine, apparently), 59 couples get married, and … one bottle of a particular nail polish is sold.

The shade? Essie’s classic “Ballet Slippers,” a barely-there, perfectly-polished (pun very much intended) pale pink. Given that there are 1,440 minutes in a day, Essie’s selling about 10,000 bottles of the stuff per week—no small feat, for sure.

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Essie Ballet Slippers — $6.00

While there are over a thousand shades in Essie’s repertoire, Ballet Slippers reigns supreme. Speaking of reigning, the polish has been Queen Elizabeth II’s go-to since the late 1980s (just a handful of years after the color launched in 1982), and has since become a favorite of Kate Middleton‘s and Meghan Markle‘s, too. This royal suite of manicure approval has sealed the oh-so-subtle polish in the hall of fame—and you can snag one for yourself for under ten bucks at your local drugstore.

Because the shade is so sheer, it’s less obvious when your manicure chips or grows out, making it a particularly practical choice for those of us who don’t have an entire beauty fleet at our disposal. Pro tip? If you want to make your mani last as long as possible, start with a pH-balancing base coat to remove any excess oil from your nail beds, apply two to three coats of polish, then top things off with a chip-resistant top coat.

Though light pink may not feel like a typical choice for winter nails, Mazz Hanna, CEO of Nailing Hollywood, says we’re seeing an increasing number of people forego trends and embrace whatever sort of mood-boosting manis makes them happy. “Not surprisingly, I think people are starting to make their own rules about what they want their winter nails to look like,” she previously told Well+Good. “I’m seeing a lot less of the deep dark red and light nude, and much more light metallics and frosts than I have seen in a while. It’s a nice change.”

While nail trends come and go, you can rest easy knowing that this classic hue will be a forever staple in the rotation. It’s like the perfect black mascara or lip balm you come back to again and again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to call my nail salon and schedule an appointment.

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