When Pantone unveiled its much-anticipated “Colour of the Year 2026” as Cloud Dancer — an off-white hue meant to call to mind a clean slate — the world was anything but calm. Many refused to believe that such a neutral shade could reflect a period dubbed “the year of impact” and a global mentality that was unravelling at the seams. Pantone has always been the colour authority dictating trends across fashion, beauty, and décor, but instead of following suit, beauty seems to be pushing back.
It has become abundantly clear that beauty craves a more tactile visual language in 2026, one that features brazen artistry, sensorial texture, and nostalgic whimsy. If there has ever been a time for beauty to rage against the machine, it is now. With the world in shambles, some of us have resigned ourselves to finding solace in the power of makeup artistry. The runways have served as a bold cry to challenge the status quo and a love letter to the imperfect. Stained, smudged, frizzed, twisted, dishevelled, and even, at times, mildly uncomfortable — after years of trying to keep it together, it’s all falling apart in the best way.
With the trend wheel spinning off its axis, churning out Gen Z-fuelled aesthetic trends at a dizzying rate, fatigue and overstimulation are starting to show. The cure? Abandoning all aesthetic mandates and leaning towards an individual sense of expression, with full autonomy over how you want to show up in the world. With the end of 2025 also marking the fall of the clean-girl era — which was all about minimalism, quiet luxury, and barely-there makeup — it’s safe to say that, collectively, we are itching for signs of life.
The year of yearning
In the face of senseless hatred and political conflict, runways’ responses have been displays of love and wild emotion, sparking a romantic resurgence that can only be described as “joyful”. This year’s most heart-racing film, Wuthering Heights, based on Emily Brontë’s tragic novel, and the season return of Netflix’s Bridgerton furthered the surge of skin-flushing romance.
At Chanel, Rabanne, Ermanno Scervino, Chloé and Simone Rocha, the mood was that of a woman overtaken with yearning. From satin skin and windswept cheeks to just-bitten lips, the key was a soft-focus application, with blurred lips, sweeping blush and diffused eyes. At Luisa Beccaria, winged eyeliner channelled a softer, sultrier side with brown kohl diffused along the lash line. At Ann Demeulemeester, meanwhile, models also sported the Wuthering Heights-inspired Brontë blush, which sits low on the cheek and is all about that warm, berry-toned, dewy flush produced by a dash across the moors.
Undone beauty
At Pronounce, N° 21, Louis Vuitton, Luisa Spagnoli and Phan Dang Hoang, a messy-girl, lo-fi aesthetic echoed a collective letting go and a deliberate undoing of perfection. Featuring dishevelled, knotted buns; post-shower air-dried hair; smudged, slept-in makeup; and morning-after eyes belonging to the party-girl archetype of the 1990s and 2000s, makeup was applied with imperfect, colour-outside-the-lines messiness.
The runways also embraced an anti-clean-girl mandate, with asymmetrical placements at Proenza Schouler and smudged applications that mimicked real-life fatigue and dark under-eye circles at Avavav.
A return to maximalism
The runways reminded us that maybe, in an effort to regain a sense of normalcy, we have oversimplified our lives and left them devoid of the joy that only colour (and rhinestones) can bring.
Beauty made a rebellious return to maximalism by way of audacious use of colour at Sportmax, Moschino, and Courrèges; technicolour lips at Chloé; and larger-than-life brows and lashes at Simone Rocha, Antonio Marras, Courrèges, and Giuseppe di Morabito. But this was not maximalism that looked garish, unrefined, or tacky — the aesthetic featured minimalist styling with a single focal point.
The dew wave
Just when it seemed as though K-Beauty “glass” skin and dewy textures that look AI-generated were taking a back seat to matte “cloud” skin, ultra-glossy skin entered the chat, looking lacquered with a high-shine, balmy gleam and paired with wet-look hair on the runways of Louis Vuitton and Jason Wu. From chrome finishes to micro shimmers, the amplification of glossy skin texture showed no signs of slowing down.
Dewy textures extended to body contours, paired with slick, wet-look hair. At Qasimi, hair looked fresh out of the water, with a super-drenched, glossy texture styled into deep finger waves. At Sportmax and Roberto Cavalli, strands looked as though they were the result of an expensive blowout or salon glossing treatment with a mirrored finish that dazzled in the light.
Gothic revival
Beauty mastered the dark arts as the soft goth revival saw runways leaning towards gothic and punk subcultures for inspiration to rewrite subversive beauty for today. There was a quiet resurgence of dark romanticism on the runways, giving a nod to punk while artfully mixing in a modern take on gothic for an elevated look.
At Avavav, models were sent out with textbook gothic makeup, complete with sooty, smudged-up eyes; opaque, feathered black lips; and a light layer of gloss that would make the Addams family weep. At Max Mara, Roberto Cavalli, JordanLuca and Tell The Truth, lips did a solo act with bold, vampiric lipstick applications in oxblood, burgundy, and black — paired with nothing else.
From the May issue of Wanted, 2026
