Fashion Week is one of those times, like someone else's wedding, where you feel pressured to look amazing even though no one is paying attention to you. So when I realized my nails were a cracked, bitten mess, I decided to go for a complete overhaul. Enter Dashing Diva. DD is a nail salon that offers a service called Virtual Nails (click through for a list of locations all over the world), during which your nubs are lightly filed and falsies are glued on.

Diva differs from a typical nail salon because of its superior hygiene and sanitation regulations. My favorite being that they give you a set of tools to bring back on your next visit. That and they don't use acrylics that smell like chemicals, you know the ones which often require technicians to wear surgical masks.

At the NY salon, the service costs $35 but that's a small price to pay for nails that are neither toxic nor cause the same kind of damage I'm trying to hide. To find out more about my visit, read more.

My technician, Maria, started by rubbing sanitizer on both of our hands. She then trimmed my cuticles and filed my nail beds. Next, she had me wash my hands and then spent a lot of time meticulously choosing the perfect size nail for each of my fingers, writing down what she settled on for next time. Once the nails were glued on, we settled on a length and shape and she trimmed and filed them. As for the color, I chose a modest rosy shade, thinking that I may as well not call attention to my fake nails, but changed my mind and went for a bright yellow called Anna Banana. After all, when someone asks me if they're real, I can always respond, "real cool!"

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