Beauty Archivist: Makeup Trend Forecasting For 2025 - Mushroom Monotones, Dramatic Lashes and Disorganisation
Words and Makeup: Grace Ellington | Model: Skye Standley
Makeup in 2024 has been dominated by two distinct vibes, poppy blush and fresh girly complexions or a 90s and early 00s palette of cool toned greys and structured greige lip lines. For 2025, beauty is shifting its lens forward to the mid/late 00s with its smudgy eyeliner, less defined lip and inclusion of shimmering shadow.
This look is being combined with a general mood of what I am going to call “literary gothic”, a dark, romantic but surprisingly minimal and natural feeling, think Bronte heroine, as well as an embrace of indeterminate muted tones pulled from references in the natural world. Things are becoming more minimal and more subcultural at the same time. This means less complexion colour, blush is paring back to fit the new gothic swing and shapes are soft and worn in.
Black Waterline
The revival I’ve been waiting for since I was 14. Black penciled lower waterlines are way less pretty than an extended upper lash line but that's why I like it. It feels a little tough and rebellious and a little bit of a Avril Lavigne throwback and therefore not too serious. Keeping with the overall mood for soft blended edges and gentle forms rather than harsh lines, I am going to line eyes with a pencil, for a softer look, or a gel pot liner when I want it to be more dramatic, special shout out to the Ingot gel for being super long wearing once dried, and then smudge downwards, keeping it a little translucent at the edges.
Products to Get The Look
Dramatic Lashes
A big area of play in 2025 will be lashes! Extra clumpy mascara, spikey falsies, fake lashes on the lower lash line. Anything that makes the eyelashes an interesting feature feels exciting.
For this look on Skye I took a set of Eylure wispy falsies and chopped them up and applied them in an out of order pattern, so instead of graduating from short to longer the lengths are random giving a choppy, messed up look. I then applied a few layers of mascara with a fan brush encouraging them to clump together. I placed a few Eylure wispy clusters below her lower lash line and filled the space as well as the waterline with a gel liner by ingot.
Products to Get The Look
Mushroom, Taupe and Warm Tonal Beiges
The cool grey tones that have been really popular are softening up and moving towards a more nature inspired palette. Shades like mushroom and taupe have the muted warmth of lavender behind them and are tonal on fair to medium complexions where neutral brown and earth tones with highlights of shimmering champagne beige are beautiful on medium to deep skin tones. These neutrals and shading and depth to the eye without providing contrast for a moody evocative look where it isn’t clear where the makeup begins and the skin ends. For this look on Skye I picked two shades of eyeshadow, a soft creamy gold tone for highlighting and a neutral toned brown for contouring, both from the Dior Backstage Smokey Essentials Palette. Both tones have a close relationship to Skye’s own skin tone being just a few shades deeper or brighter for a low contrast, luminous look. I used the deeper tone to contour the arch of her eye socket and outer side of her lid and the shimmering highlight in the centre lid, tear duct, under the eye and brow bone.
Products to Get The Look
Dior Backstage Smokey Essentials Palette
Monotonal Complexions
I think maybe blush is over? At least in its current hyper saturated form. I am going to keep wearing and using it but in much more subdued and earthy shades closer to my skin tone and am going to move the placement back towards the hollows of cheeks, think of it as a hybrid of contour and blush that adds some depth and warmth but doesn’t scream its presence
Products to Get The Look
For a light to medium complexion:
For a medium deep to deep complexion:
Disorganised Shimmer
Whilst the overall tone of beauty for 2025 feels like it's getting a bit more subdued I think shimmer and fine glitter is really going to come into its own. The freshest application is disorganised. To make this work, pick more than one shade and apply in a random manner across the lid and up to the brow. Picking colours with a sheer aspect to them and embracing fall out creates a beautiful effect. As does keeping the rest of the eye look restrained.
For this look on Skye I used a gold metallic eyeshadow by Rabanne on her lid and inner corner, I applied it with a long fluffy brush specifically for an imprecise placement that deposited mostly the glitter element of the shade. I then applied Fenty Beauty’s Diamond Bomb over everything and up to her brow bone. To get the highest impact out of this sheer fine product I used my finger for application.
Products to Get The Look
