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1990s fashion part V: Makeup

(This mostly covers white girl makeup b/c that’s what I remember. Comments appreciated!)

For the most part, in the early 1990s, makeup was pretty plain. Check out the 1990s supermodel photo above. Kind of a nice, natural look. Maybe some brown eyeliner. Natural brows (remember Donna in 90210?). Blush was still carrying over from the 1980s. I remember the “clear mascara” trend (stupidest thing ever) which was supposed to separate and define your lashes although it didn’t actually do anything. Watch a movie like Sliver with Sharon Stone and you see the epitome of this extremely plain, extremely boring look.

The mid-1990s saw a huge popularity in dark red matte lipstick and dark red nails. Chanel Vamp was a dark red-black shade that sold $1 million worth in the first year it was available, 1994. Sassy magazine swore up and down this was due to the Twin Peaks influence on fashion, which popularized this sort of femme fatale, retro look. A great deal of early 1990s makeup harkened back to classic movie stars, with dark brows, heavy red lipstick, and winged eyeliner.

Drew Barrymore epitomizes the “mallternative” look of 1994-1996: heavily tweezed eyebrows, thrift store leopard coat, tattoos, maybe an eyebrow piercing, liquid eyeliner, and thick dark red matte lipstick. Lack of eyeshadow morphed into light eyeshadow (like a white or light blue shimmer). Skin is buffed and kept very pale - as a pale girl I loved this trend! Lots of matte face powder. Not a gloss to be seen, no tans. Wan and rebellious. 

In the mid-1990s the raver look popularized such classy makeup as light blue nailpolish (“Sky” by Hard Candy was THYE shade in 1996), body glitter, eye glitter, hair glitter, and just dumping glitter over your head (I would advise against this approach unless you want glitter all over your apartment).

Courtney Love popularized a punk, smeared makeup look, although she only wore that for a few years before she got a lot of plastic surgery and went “Hollywood.” Note the dark red lipstick though!

90s FTW!