Makeup Trends: The Look on the Street

These days, beauty trends are just as likely to originate from social media as they are from the catwalk. Forecasters, brands, and the ‘trend-savvy’ are now asking more than ever, what is more, powerful in directing makeup trends, the street or the catwalk.

When designers send their seasonal collections marching down the runway they have a curated vision of how the show will be portrayed. All of the elements that make a catwalk show; lighting, sound, hair, and makeup are key to conveying the designer’s vision. Looks are often avant-garde or extremely minimal, they are aspirational and to be used as inspiration as they make their way into fashionistas homes via a punchy coloured lip, highlighted cheeks or a shimmering eye.

Makeup trends often defy the seasons dictated by the high fashion superpowers that dominate the international fashion weeks. ‘The streets’ are always encouraging free spirits to join together in a carefree environment to create subcultures. Diverging from normality to influence one and another and develop their own sense of identity, subcultures often represent everything in excess and exaggeration, especially make-up. Once seen as outsiders, using makeup as a form of self-expression and empowerment, think glitter, sequins, neon colours and face paint, these look have now been adopted and embraced by the masses, showing how the evolution of subcultures from the streets has had a massive influence on trend direction.

The influential world of blogging has also had an enormous impact on the way trends from ‘the street’ are communicated: more and more people are becoming involved in street styling. For example, the notable Sartorialist blog, a documentation of everyday street style, has to lead the way to digital marketing trends that revolutionize how the beauty (and fashion) industry markets and projects to customers. Much like the fashion industry, there’s lots of new hurdles and new territory to be conquered within the beauty landscape, but there are plenty of girls (even boys) leading the way. The Middle East proudly plays host to the world’s biggest beauty blogger, Huda Beauty.

Social-media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube have changed the way beauty trends are shared. From the catwalk, where makeup is used to create an ideal, to the street, where makeup takes on a form of self-expression, we see professional and amateur makeup artists carving out their ‘style’ for the world to see.

Ultimately, cities around the world, including Dubai, are hugely cosmopolitan, people are not afraid to show who they really are and they use makeup and fashion to express their personalities.