Beauty Archivist: Wan Girl Winter and How Gothic Naturalism Took Over 2024
Words: Grace Ellington
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After a few years now of clean girl beauty dominance, you might have been forgiven for thinking that the change in the beauty tide was flipping back to something more exuberant. Yet the cultural reemergence of the Gothic, a genre often not afraid of a high theatre beauty look, is this time arriving with a less predictable association. A pivot towards naturalism. The new Gothic Naturalism eschews powdered skin and dramatic black eye makeup for an embrace of beauty minimalism. The mood is above all, cinematic. It references films and gothic literature rather than music and subculture. It’s romantic and emotional, more Mary Shelley than Siouxsie Sioux.
Key features of Gothic Naturalism are undone hair, either a complexion with very little colour variation across the whole face, or a complexion where the areas of colour variation are in line with the reality of flesh - you might see flush and heat but only during movement, there might be dark circles but these feel real rather than stylised. There could be a red lip or some other singular makeup accessory, but never eye makeup, and all of the underlying architecture of the face is unaltered, so no contour, blush or drawn in eyebrows. Essentially it’s mostly about the absence of the expected rather than the presence of anything. In combination with fashion that draws on the dark and macabre, the realism of this face is very Wuthering Heights core.
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In contrast with the decadence of gothic dress, the undone minimalist pallor of gothic naturalism feels really narrative. In Dilara Findikoglu’s No Man’s Territory campaign, Mariacarla Boscono holds a medieval-looking sword in a swirling dark landscape; her clothing is Dilara’s signature high gothic romance. She wears structured dresses of oily black feathers, pallid corsetry and blood-red draping, but her face and hair feel like she’s stepped straight from the ocean. Her skin tone is smooth and unbroken by any flush of colour. The effect places Boscono squarely into the universe of the image, which feels like a still from a very fashionable arthouse horror movie. The stripped beauty makes us think of Boscono as a character in situ rather than a model on a set. It doesn’t break the fourth wall the way an artfully laboured editorial makeup look might, instead inviting you to engage with the fictional reality of the setting.
Lily Rose Depp as Mina in the trailers for Robert Egger’s upcoming Nosferatu feels like a key moment for this aesthetic swing. Her toneless complexion is broken only by pools of grey under her eyes and her natural full brow. Depp’s eyes are unadorned with mascara or the smokey grey eyeshadow worn by Winona Ryder in the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Isabelle Adjani in the 1979 Werner Herzog version of Nosferatu. Without any stylisation in the way, the close ups of Depp’s face are all huge watery eyes and uncontained intensity.
“The result was dark, sinewy and historical feeling, very goth, the faces of the models clean and gleaming.”
On the FW24 runway Ann Demeulemeester, queen of romantic melancholy, sent out models with naked skin, and mussed hair with flyaways that caught the backlights like a halo. Simone Rocha’s collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier was named The Wake and was held in a 12th century church. She referenced the mourning dress of Queen Victoria alongside Gaultier’s archive of corsetry and boning. The result was dark, sinewy and historical feeling, very goth, the faces of the models clean and gleaming.
The mood is also cropping up in places that aren’t explicitly gothic but contain an undercurrent of something dark. This abstract air of darkness is in Addison Rae’s Diet Pepsi and Aquamarine music videos, both creative directed by Mel Ottenberg, who has long been placing mainstream celebrities in high concept, cinematic environments. Addison on a bridge, black shimmering dress and languid, floppy neck dancing, shot from the perspective of the water below, is gothic of the new American Lynchian variety, as are the black and white shots of her torso and limbs bisected by the camera frame in Diet Pepsi. The vague feel of the sinister is heightened by the rawness of her beauty look. The horror adjacent vibe to the visuals are enhanced by the very real feeling of her face and hair, the naturalism evokes a vulnerability that plays into the sense of danger. There’s a lack of polish to Addison’s appearance that is extremely evocative and intimate feeling, which is fitting for a category that is all about a turbulence of emotion.
One subject I love to keep coming back to, and I think makes the biggest impact on what a beauty look signifies culturally, is the difference between makeup techniques that aim to recreate a natural beauty asset and makeup that has no relation to a real feature, meant only to be seen as make up. Ironically a lot of the canon of natural beauty and no makeup makeup actually belongs more to the category of artifice than bold statement makeup does. Constructing a glowing and healthy complexion with bronzer and blush, for example, vs a bold red lip. Stripping out the colour complexion products, as well as the details such as the groomed eyebrows and lashes that are part of most natural makeup looks, feels strikingly intimate and subversive when combined with gothic styling. Simply, it’s easier to read emotion on a face that feels very raw, and at its heart goth is all about emotion.
