This is the year the clean girl leaves room for maximalist makeup

Let’s be honest: For the better part of the last five years, our Instagram explore pages looked nothing like maximalist makeup. Instead, they’ve been filled with sheer skin, perfectly hidden under the eyes and a safe wash of taupe on the lids. The predominant “clean girl” aesthetic favored minimalism over raw personality. Beauty became synonymous with groomed eyebrows, a touch of shine and elongated, perhaps carefully separated eyelashes. But if the last few seasons have made anything clear, it is that makeup is no longer content with just behaving well.

On runways, red carpets, and social media, color has been steadily returning to the conversation. Not in the blunt, theatrical way she once did, but with more emotional nuances: a blue haze on the lash line, a metallic lid, an unexpected wash of lavender or silver. After years of beige minimalism and algorithmic uniformity, makeup is starting to look fun again. More importantly, it’s starting to feel personal and expressive again.

“Before the pandemic, beauty was very fluid and natural,” says Valentina Li, global creative makeup partner at CHANEL. “Everyone was looking for something very polished.” The years of isolation subtly altered that state of mind. When the Internet became the primary site of self-presentation, beauty tutorials multiplied, experimentation flourished, and makeup became, in many ways, a language. “Social media gave people a platform to express themselves,” Li says. “Makeup became a tool to tell the story you want to tell.”

That renewed appetite for color is the reason for the new CHANEL Denim makeup collection. Inspired by Li’s favorite color, blue, and the house’s long relationship with denim, the limited-edition line translates the fabric’s shifting hues into pigments. From faded light blue tones to deeper, darker blues, softened with coral pink, silver and touches of gold, the collection captures denim as an emotion and personality rather than just a fabric.

Its centerpiece, the Quadra Multi-Effect Les 4 Ombres Eyeshadow Palette brings together a set of shades that feel pulled from a beloved pair of jeans in different stages of wear: a soft, faded blue, a deeper slate-like shade, a luminous pale shade, and a pink that adds warmth. “When you wash a pair of jeans over and over again, the color fades and changes over time,” says Li. “That fading contains memory. Color conveys emotion and easily connects us with feelings or experiences.” The Rouge Coco Flash moisturizing vibrant lip gloss color with its metallic tones gives the collection a fresher and more futuristic touch. Each product can be layered, toned down or intensified depending on mood. That flexibility is especially important now, at a time when beauty is moving away from rigid archetypes and back toward individuality. “The era of clean girls made everyone look equal,” Li says. “Now people want to break that aesthetic. When you wear makeup, the only person you have to please is yourself.”