Hailey Bieber’s natural look paves the path for 2020s beauty
The Kardashians gave us bold, statement-making looks that defined the 2010s and influenced a decade of faces, but Gen Z has gone in a different direction. Tell us who you think is the face of the current generation in our POLL.
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The Kardashians gave us bold, statement-making looks that defined the 2010s and influenced a decade of faces, but as Gen Z moves away from heavy foundation and statement brows to a more subtle look, it is the likes of Hailey Bieber that more define the look of the 2020s.
The queen of the nepo babies and wife of pop star Justin, Bieber’s beauty brand Rhode, which she sold earlier this year for $1 billion, encapsulates the natural beauty that is bang on trend this decade.
But the unimpeded rise of social media and the democratisation of influence has had an indelible effect on who has enough clout to change the course of fashion, beauty and popular culture.
While in previous decades a Kardashian or Jenner simply needed to change the colour of their lipstick for thousands of girls to start donning a dark matte lip, and the omnipresence of Anna Wintour launched a thousand cerulean sweaters into the Zeitgeist, now gather a few thousand followers on TikTok and you are reviving Vivienne Westwood’s pearl chokers.
And it’s that natural beauty look, the no-make-up make-up, that is leaping from paparazzi shots of Hailey Bieber to the magazines and runways of the world.
Legendary Australian model booker Kathy Ward says heavy makeup and altered beauty is an immediate turn-off when people come to her agency Chic Model Management.
“Make-up can be very distracting. (A natural look), makes people stand out,” Ward says. “Girls coming to our agency with a lot of make-up on immediately turns us away – we just want to see girls’ natural beauty, beautiful skin and natural features.”
Ward points to the likes of Bieber and Italian model Vittoria Ceretti, whose effortless natural beauty is the visage many are trying to emulate.
Ceretti was recently dubbed best-dressed at the over-the-top Bezos-Sánchez wedding in Venice, where she was variously decked out in chiffon floral summer dresses, or a black dress with a plunging neckline and diamond jewels, or, famously, a silver Dolce & Gabbana gown that Gisele Bündchen wore to the 2003 Met Gala for the “PJ party” that wrapped up the extravaganza.
But each looked was matched with the effortless, flawless, barely there make-up that Ceretti has become famous for.
Current trends are also moving away from the subtly-enhanced trends of the 2010s, with cosmetic procedures like lip fillers losing their popularity.
“From an agency point of view, in terms of assessing someone’s potential, we look at a very natural look because then you can see the real natural beauty come through,” Ward said.
“It can’t be altered beauty, it has to be the natural features with no enhancement.”
Bieber has denied having turned to cosmetic enhancements, claiming her full lips are a genetic hand-down from her grandmother.
Her appearance on the cover of the latest edition of Vogue further cemented the 27-year-old as the face of the 2020s.
The style bible’s culture editor Alessandra Codihna documented fans’ “baggy jeans, baby tees, slicked-back centre-parted buns, glossy pouts, and perfect, almond-shaped manicures” efforts to not only catch a glimpse of Bieber at the Los Angeles pop-up of her Rhodes beauty brand, but also encapsulate the culinary-inspired looks she has mothered.
From glazed-doughnut skin to cinnamon-cookie-butter hair to brownie-glazed lips, the clean-girl look that Bieber has inspired sounds delicious.
But as ubiquitous as Bieber has become over the past decade, so too has the rise of the micro influencers, who may not appear on the cover of Vogue but are still having a huge impact on the look of the younger generation.
“You don’t have to have a big following, but if you produce content which is appealing to the generation then they will get traction,” Ward says.
And while they have been accused of being in their “flop era”, don’t discount the Kardashian/Jenner influence behemoth; Ward says they aren’t going anywhere – even if their influence has tempered somewhat.
“They’ll just continue reinventing themselves and doing things differently and, look, good on them. They’re very, very successful.
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