The Clean Girl Is Dead. Long Live Glam.
The clean girl era is being buried — and as we dig her grave and wait for her body to go cold, we mourn by beating our faces again. What started as a breath of fresh air quickly became a uniform — and now, we’re finally exhaling.
We remove our black veils, and take our slick-back buns down, massage our edges and sigh in relief. Let’s talk about why clean-girl was so big — and who really fronted the era.
Minimalism Was Never Neutral
Let’s not rewrite history — the clean-girl aesthetic didn’t just appear; it was curated, marketed, and moralized. It started as a response to the so-called ‘cringe’ glam of 2014-2016 — the cut creases, the heavy contour — ironically, the same looks we’re now romanticizing with nostalgia.
After 2020, the world was desperate for calm — and beauty followed. The slick bun and glazed skin became visual Prozac for a society on edge.
But let’s not forget who was at the forefront of this aesthetic, or how when social media called for diversity in this trend, some faces and bodies were deemed “too much” for the clean-girl mold. This, despite the fact that queer pioneers in the ballroom scene, and Black and Brown women had originated the very look before it was repackaged and famed.
The clean-girl aesthetic fueled the takeoff of careers and rebrands across beauty and influencer culture, from Hailey Bieber to Matilda Djerf, and giving birth to a wave of minimalist beauty brands and rebrands. The no-makeup makeup boom wasn’t just a look — it was a business model, a lifestyle, a behavioral prescription: Stay quiet. Stay consistent. Stay clean. Stay thin. Like the aesthetic itself, its brand identities — literal and personified — were drenched in neutral palettes of white, beige, cream. Uniform, slim body types. If you search up “clean-girl aesthetic” on Pinterest, you’ll find collages of white girls in Alo matching sets, a matcha in hand, untextured slick-back buns, Rhode products, sheet masks, and OPI Bubble Bath manicures. That pretty much sums up the era — the irony, the gatekeeping, the carefully packaged restraint.
When the no makeup, makeup look caught on, it exploded, pushing established brands to rebrand, and birthing a new generation of skincare and beauty lines, and tutorials. It was fresh in the beginning, new to many…a soft reset after the chaos of 2020, and I do mean that beyond the pandemic. But eventually, the beige began to blur together. The aesthetic grew tired, bland, and over-sanitized…starting to reveal itself for what is was always meant to be: a symptom of a larger cultural craving for control.
If you’ve been paying attention, you know trends never just… happen. They’re responses, reflections — sometimes rehearsals — to politics, to pressure, to power. And as I unpacked in We’ve Been Prepped & Primed For This Political Era, aesthetics always tell the truth before anyone else does. The clean-girl era wasn’t just a cultural moment; it was a monetized one. An economy built on looking effortless, selling restraint as aspiration.
But something is shifting. The blush is brighter, the liner is darker. The lips? Louder. Beneath the beige, rebellion brews. Are we finally headed back to our glamour era?
The Cracks in the Clean Girl’s Mirror
Slowly but surely, the craving for uniqueness, and drama has been cracking the screen. The people are bored. Every variation of the clean-girl look — the summer bronzed version, the Pilates princess, the fifty shades of the slick-back bun — has been done, mastered, and recycled. The people want color, texture, creativity, variety.
Even through the minimalist haze, artists and brands began sneaking color and creativity back into trends, staying committed to the art of glamour — slowly releasing us from the beige shackles of ‘effortless’ beauty. Pat McGrath’s makeup looks on the runway and in editorials feel cinematic and story-like again —not just pretty. Doja Cat is painting the town red, pink, blue, and purple with 80s inspired flair. JT’s grunge-glam is the antidote to every bland eyeshadow tutorial we’ve scrolled past. Ngozi Edeme, better known as PaintedbyEsther, made bright blush on Black women the new baseline, not the bold exception. The glam girls and tastemakers never disappeared — Aliyah Muse, Toni Shamara, and many others — they were just waiting for the rest of us to catch up. They’ve become the muses for those ready to dip back into creativity and excess.
While many see a new trend rising, I see something deeper — a refusal. A pushback against the shrinking agenda, to simplify, to behave. Hope and rouge are alive. We’ve analyzed and mourned the minimalists. Now it’s time to pick the brushes back up.
Your Glamour-Era Starter Kit
So how do we resurrect glamour — without losing ourselves to nostalgia or perfectionism? Start here.
Base — Visible Skin
Forget ‘barely there’ makeup that may or may not survive a humid day. Full glam is the new freedom. Don’t fear powder, blush, or shine — they give your face narrative, not noise. Go matte, dewy, full-beat — just be seen. You’re not a background extra; your skin deserves coverage, and character and yes , texture. PaintedbyEsther proves that your base can go full and bold, and can still look like skin.
Eyes — The First Word
Let your eyes speak first. Barely-there eye contour is cute, but shimmer and messy liner are not crimes. Play with pigment, sparkle, smoke, and smudge. Let your eyes carry the mood before your mouth does.
Lips — Say it Louder
Gloss, gloss, and more gloss. Lip balms are a forever staple, and nude is cute, but there’s so much more to be had with lip combinations. Reds, pinks, purples — even inky blacks — belong back in rotation. Whatever shade makes people stare, wear it.
Give Your Edges a Break
Your edges have been on salary for three years — give them PTO. Glamour goes beyond makeup. Just like everyone demanded the bombshell blowouts return for the 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, bring that same energy to your real life. Let your texture, volume, and flyaways free. Think cool braided styles, flips and flair, rod sets, fros, blowouts, layers, pixies, bobs, color, even!
This next era of beauty isn’t about clean lines or quiet tones—it’s about showing up loud, alive, and unfiltered. The world wants calm compliance. We’re serving chaos in contour.
Long live the girls who color outside the lines.
catch you in the next entry, xoxo 💋
