When Emily Wood first graced my feed in 2023, I thought she was kooky. She refers to herself as a “face decorator” rather than a makeup artist which feels appropriate considering her application technique. Emily doesn’t own a ring light. She does her makeup on the balcony, in the elevator, or what looks like British countryside in less than ideal weather conditions. Some days, she whips out a brush to apply a nude color to her lips, and some days, she is slathering neon green eyeshadow all over her eyelids with her fingers. In her hands, a lip pencil is a blush, an eyeshadow, a contour, and a skin tint. Her content doesn’t quite fit anywhere between the intricate makeup videos I watched on YouTube as a teen and the seven-step skincare routines I save on TikTok as a young woman. I wonder if beauty brand managers would’ve still been writing her off as “the weird girl” who doesn’t fit into their brand’s aspirational mood board if the internet didn’t find out that she was Aimee Lee Wood’s sister. I wonder if they would’ve looked at her twice if she wasn’t white and naturally pretty which isn’t to say she doesn’t deserve the attention she is getting.
If you zoom out and look at the bigger picture though, nothing about Emily is weird. After five years of glossy lips, donut glaze skin, and bushy boy brows, we are up for a resurgence of the bolder nostalgic looks. On social media, alternative fashion, beauty, and lifestyle influences have long started thinning, bleaching, and shaving off their eyebrows to replicate the 90s grunge looks, and for a brief moment in 2021, some of them were even drawing dark undereyes. Like Emily, they are applying skincare and makeup in the middle of busy city streets, on subway trains, and in the middle of nowhere. If early beauty creators turned an intimate ritual into entertainment, the youngest generation of beauty creators turned it into performance art. While the final look matters, so does the act of self-expression that is creating it in public.
Garance Venus Gaelle Murru, Salwa Rahman, and Emily Wood doing their makeup
Outside of the internet, prominent fashion figures, like Alex Consani and Gabbriette made 90s eyebrows part of their signature look. Celebrities, like Julia Fox, Doja Cat, and Chappel Roan, have leaned heavily into drastic red carpet looks that reference everything from pop culture moments to Greek mythology. Margaret Zhang, Tiffany Godoy, and Mix Wei brought progressive makeup looks, reminiscent of the 80s editorial and stage makeup, to the big fashion covers – W Magazine China and Vogue China and Japan – pushing partner brands, like Chanel Beauty, out of their comfort zone. And of course, there is a whole slew of independent magazines and fashion brands that never stopped pushing for artistry and creative expression in beauty.
Editorial makeup by Ana Takahashi, Valentina Li, and Thomas Lorenz
Last year, Pat McGrath and her team caused a social media frenzy with the porcelain doll looks they created for John Galliano’s last couture show at Margiela. It felt like everyone remotely interested in beauty and fashion was trying to crack what was used to create that porcelain shine on the models’ skin. A year later, those looks materialized in the beauty market in the form of the Skin Fetish mask which caused tension among industry insiders – many questioned whether releasing a $38 mask that the internet has long managed to find a drugstore dupe for, was a smart business decision. Its utility outside of the editorial world was also questionable which is likely why the company launched a much more versatile Skin Fetish setting spray a few weeks ago.
Other beauty companies, like Starface, have been changing the narrative around imperfections with colorful acne patches spotted on everyone from Addison Rae to Lil Uzi Vert. In the past couple of years, their PR reps at Gia Kuan Consulting scored the company The Face and Dazed cover shoots with Madeline Argy and Amelia Gray, Collina Strada runway show at NYFW, and a collaboration with Heaven by Marc Jacobs – pushing the brand and its young customers into the editorial beauty territory that other young commercial brands, like Glossier, Rhode, and Rare Beauty largely stay away from.
None of this is happening in the vacuum. There is an obvious link between what’s happening in the arts, entertainment, and culture at large and beauty trends. Self-expression that’s integral to the queer clubbing and rave scene has exploded into the mainstream post “brat summer” after slowly but surely building up its influence over the past few decades. “Without spaces where subcultures can genuinely experiment with their style, beauty would completely lose out to the clean girl aesthetic,” Hatti Rex writes in the intro of her interview with photographer Felicity Ingram who spent the past two years documenting the experimental fashion and makeup looks created by underground youth. “Nobody is rocking up to reformer pilates or an all-hands meeting with liberty spikes and kabuki make-up, as iconic as that may be.”
These days, stripping off layers and showing up as “authentic self” feels boring rather than refreshing – partially because very few people are authentically interesting and partially because authenticity has lost value and meaning in the current attention economy. All identity construction is artificial even if you are a civilian picking out an outfit, a makeup look, and a hairstyle that feels like you. The only way to remain honest is to embrace the absurdity and use beauty and fashion to create compelling characters. “The world is your stage” calls for exaggerated, almost theatrical makeup that communicates something rather than makes the performers look pretty.
The value of beauty and specifically the type of beauty that fits into the conservative, predominantly white standards, is questionable in the world where women are both increasingly independent and aware of the misogyny that surrounds them. A few months ago, I came across a video that said “I love Emma. She does nothing for the male gaze,” over a screengrab of influencer Emma Chamberlain learning to play a ukulele. Last September, she posted a YouTube video documenting the hairstyles she’s had over the years and the process of making a decision to cut her hair short…and then shorter for the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty…and then even shorter for The Met. The fans didn’t love it, but she didn’t care, reiterating something along the lines of “it makes me feel cool” over and over again, and seven months later, everyone is finally seeing the vision.
With the rise of the "manosphere” influencers and political figures openly attacking women’s rights, it’s tempting to point to a resurgence of “men repeller” looks – short colorful hair, bleached eyebrows, bold makeup, piercings, and tattoos. But that would mean that any form of women’s self-expression is tied to men in one way or another which is unfair even to the “clean girls” on TikTok who dabble in minimal makeup, stereotypically preferred by men, as a form of self-care and attempt to connect with other women. That would leave out a growing number of women who just don’t care where they stand in relation to the male gaze and want to have fun with the largely female and queer fashion and beauty crowds.
What I find odd is that most of the beauty brands represented in large retailers, like Ulta and Sephora, are still producing products and marketing for the lowest common denominator consumer. Majority of innovation goes into perfecting the formula and creating the ultimate base, blush, and glossy lip. Majority of the marketing budget goes into influencer marketing, aesthetic iPhone photos, and dreamy activations. Very few product developers and marketers care to dig deeper into the recent shifts in women’s behavior, lifestyles, and interests. If they did, we would’ve seen a wider range of shades, colors, and textures, multi-use products, and a variety of face decorations on the market. We would have had thoughtful conversations about beauty in the context of self-expression, art, creativity instead of watching someone blend their blush and reapply lip gloss over and over again.
When I think about the real girls’ wardrobe, my mind instantly goes to the Carmen store in Amsterdam. The curation is full of pieces from what I’d call “real girl brands” from New York, LA, and Europe – poplin pants and skirts from Brooke Callahan, tops from Flore Flore and Baserange, and sexy wedges from Maryam Nassir Zadeh. The way real girls dress reminds me of the way young girls dress before they let branding influence their decisions, understand the concept of matching, or connect the dots between how the way they dress impacts the way others might behave towards them.
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Real girls styled in Brooke Callahan
A real girl’s wardrobe is well-researched with days, weeks, and years poured into finding the perfect tank top and the pants that resemble those worn by heroines in the 80s rom coms and erotic thrillers as well as tracking down obscure luxury pieces that they’ve seen on Vogue Runway and Style.com. But it’s also intuitive with their most prized possessions often finding them serendipitously at flea markets, consignment stores, local shops, and random stands. They have a mental reference board with clippings from films, magazines, street sightings, social media posts, and childhood memories - colors, textures, details, smells, and feelings - that just click when they see the right pieces.
Real girls break rules. They use neckties as belts, wrap belts around their ankles as accessories, and layer dresses over pants as if they are unaware of the way each piece is supposed to be used. They also have the stamina to pull it off without looking like the “She’s So Crazzzzzzzy! Love her!!!” meme. Lara McGrath is the most striking example of this that I’ve seen. She completely disregards the original utility and shapes of her garments and wraps them around her body, like a kid playing fashion designer in their bedroom, creating her own ephemeral clothes.
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Lara McGrath
There’s plenty of uniform dressing – roommy menswear pieces thrown over simple monochromatic fits – the epitome of “the most fashion obsessed girl u know dresses like this” meme. But the ultimate real girl flex is to be able to throw a blue top together with a green skirt and a red shoe and somehow make it all work with gold jewelry, a wacky hat, and a random canvas tote. Girls who wear Brooke Callahan pieces in primary colors are strikingly good at that. Olympia Gayot of J.Crew Women and their color librarian Rive Carlin explain the level of expertise it takes to throw colors together in a way that makes sense really well. After years of trying, J.Crew seems to be finally getting the real girl style.
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Paloma Elsesser in Brooke Callahan and Olympia Gayot and Rive Carlin in new J.Crew
A cleavage, a midriff, a nipple are exposed in a way that only the girls and the gays can comprehend – designed to provoke an ah! feeling the same way a runway piece, an editorial shoot, or a painting do. A NYC-based denim brand Still Here recently sent out a newsletter dedicated to “nips”. “An outfit with the right amount of nipple is tasteful and effortless,” they write. “Whoops, the shirt happens to be semi-transparent. At a certain angle with the right lighting, you may see a bit more than just a suggestion of breast. With a gust of wind or strong air conditioning, your top is shouting “I’m a girl.” It’s less about sex appeal, they conclude, and more about adding visual friction to an outfit.
I see brands try to hijack the real girl look by throwing together random pieces and colors in their story photoshoots, getting the niche downtown “it girls” to model them, and hot photographers to work on the campaigns. They go through all the right motions, strategize what’s in, and get their pieces in all the right hands but lack a special sauce to pull it off. The fact that real girls cluster around certain brands has less to do with status, fitting into a respectable crowd, or external validation, and more with the ability of people behind these brands to understand them, their lifestyle, and their wardrobe wants and needs on an almost spiritual level. One of my favorite videos on the internet is this Aimee France Milan haul in which she reads “Loro Piana” off the tag of a blouse she bought for the summer with a genuine unfamiliarity with the brand. “The garment just falls really nicely,” she explains.
Most often, these people, like designer and stylist Emily Long Dawn, are real girls themselves. This quote from Liana Satenstein about her has been stuck in my head for weeks now: “When I look at her designs, I see a woman who really lives life, sweats in her clothes, and then hand-washes them in the sink.” Real girls fill their wardrobes with life – they treasure them, but they also let them get wrinkled, sweaty, and dirty. filling the fabric with precious memories. The grit and the grime turns them into real girl artifacts that future real girls will be shopping for at a closet sale.
What does it mean to live an “aspirational lifestyle”? Based on the imagery pushed on women by the cult-followed brands and the talent they work with, it’s about quiet mornings dedicated to self-care, productive afternoons that push our careers forward, glamorous nights that allow us to let loose, and occasional relaxing vacations that help us recharge and get inspired.
The more fucked up the world becomes, the more tempting it is to curate its horrors out of our everyday lives. Seven-step skincare routines, eBay rabbit holes, and morning pilates classes are the types of things that women get into, talk and post about to fill our lives with positive emotions and human connections that don’t revolve around money, power, status, and sex. And while taking care of yourself and dedicating time and effort to something technically frivolous, like writing fashion show reviews, getting abs for the summer, or tracking down the tanktop that Nicole Kidman wore in Eyes Wide Shut, doesn’t automatically make one shallow and uninteresting, pretending that this is what life is all about does.
In the process of writing this piece, I read this one by The Cut’s fashion writer Danya Issawi where she recaps witnessing a charged political exchange in the subscriber chat of a fellow fashion writer – it got quickly shut down by one of the parties saying there is “time and place for discussions about this, but this is NOT it.” As Danya points out, Substack is one of the few places on the internet that’s still fairly apolitical (unless you pay attention to its founders or subscribe to political pundits), and fashion, and specifically commercial fashion, is the type of industry that likes to sweep politics under the rug. The unfortunate truth is that everything is political, down to who fashion brands dress, who their execs shake hands with, and who fashion magazines platform. To pretend that it isn’t is delusional.
There are “culture strategists” out there who will look you dead in the eye and spit out some bullshit take, like “hanging out with friends is a status symbol in the post-luxury world” and share tips on how brands can capitalize on it. There are influencers whose life is happy hours, unboxing videos, and European trips. There are PR managers who get annoyed when some sort of political crisis interrupts their campaign rollout schedule. There are fashion, beauty, and hospitality brands who stay away from the talent that speaks earnestly about politics. And then there are real people who are figuring out how to pursue their creative ambitions and build a nice life without getting consumed by guilt or becoming numb to everything happening around them.
“There is, believe it or not, more to life than designer Tabis,” Danya writes. “The genuinely coolest people I know care deeply about the real world and understand the way they move through it has a ripple effect — has real, tangible consequences, big and small. They care about their neighbors, they care about the planet, they care about people they don’t know. And many of you out there, and on here, obsessed with mimicking a lifestyle filled with effervescence, bliss and cashmere sweaters draped over shoulders, will never, ever be able to tap into the deepest most human thing tethering us all to one another: compassion.”
This is the gist of it – real women live in the real world. They make homemade cookies for their friends and family, they bring people together over reading instead of running a virtual book club designed to make them look sophisticated, they donate to women’s shelters and show up to protests, they don’t make business and career decisions that are at odds with their values and if they do, they own up to it. They want to understand culture for the sake of touching it in a positive way rather than capitalizing on consumer insecurities and weaknesses. Their active interest and participation in other people’s lives keeps them grounded and human. Ironically, this makes them more successful and their success more sustainable than that of those who are precious about curating a picture perfect life.
