As the fashion week cycle hits snowy New York, this city’s ready-to-wear shows introduced the most wearable beauty looks of the season. From feathered nails and eyelashes at Luar and Thom Browne, to 1980s matriarch-inspired beauty at Diotima, here are all the biggest beauty trends from New York FW25.
Lived-in hair
For the past few seasons, the undoing of beauty—the opposite of getting “done up”—has been more in focus. From rolling up your hair just for the curlers to droop down, to the wig you wake up with when your scarf falls off at night, and even wearing your uneven textured afro out of the house, living in your hair means wearing it undone and finding beauty in the imperfection.
At Diotima, “there’s these fallen rollers, and she’s grabbing her coat and running out the door,” hairstylist Joey George says, using photographer Dawoud Bey’s late 1980s work to build a character for his matriarch wigs. Unlike other shows, which often prefer cornrowed hair, Coach continued the story through locs, a Black hairstyle which requires your texture to be “lived-in” to lock. Meanwhile, at Prabal Gurung, wigs were shocked with humidity, turning frizziness into a sign of beauty.
Green makeup
From speckled eyeshadow to swampy lips, green was New York’s trending color this season. At Christopher John Rogers, olive green eyeshadow was used as lipstick coined the show’s “galactic lip” adding both dimension to the beauty. A similar texture at Collina Strada was applied to the inner eyes for a green streak of color, meanwhile, at Christian Cowan, stacked wigs couldn’t upstage powdered green eyeshadow.
Late ‘80s references
From the Buffalo styling period to Stonewall club drag and the work of Dawoud Bey, the late ‘80s is the only era that can break beauty out of the ‘90s grip. At Luar, a heavily-powdered white eyeshadow elongated the brow bone, while grey accent shadow bolted through the center, bringing back underground ‘80s drag. In a pared-back version of the look, makeup artist Romero Jennings tapped into the era’s grunge scene at Kim Shui, elongating liner instead of eyeshadow, while blending and smudging instead of darting.
Geometric lipstick
Lipstick tube running low? Just apply it to the center instead. While Marc Jacob’s was the first to present at NYFW—almost a week before the official calendar began—Thom Browne closed the week similar to how it started.
Pat McGrath pinned the lips of models at Marc Jacobs with a mixture of circular-shaped velvet and crystallized materials; the look was the third take on their doll-like beauty trend. Then, in a similar center-lipped fashion, makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench applied dual-stripes to rectangular lipstick exclusively on the center third of the lips at Thom Browne.
Feathered beauty
“El Pato” translated to “duck” in English and used as a homophobic slur in Latin countries, was the title of Luar’s feather-flocked FW25 show. Nail artist Naomi Yasuda used top coat to adhere black, white, and brown feathers to crystal-adorned press-on nails, while feathered headpieces and broaches were seen throughout the collection.
At Thom Browne, lashes were decorated with long, feathery plumage and crystals, turning the nails at Luar into an eyelash statement. Meanwhile, hair-colored feathers caked onto the hairline replaced bangs at Fforme, while feathered brows were taken literally with quills glued on.
