From glamrock eyeshadow to a glut of guyliner, the eye makeup has been as bold as the clothing at the men’s collections this season. At Junya Watanabe’s runway show in Paris today, makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench buffed smudgy black eyeliner and lightly glossy lips that chimed neatly with a moody collection of reconstructed suiting. Rather than a New Romantic throwback, it made for a contemporary take on boy beauty. “The look was a desaturated palette of taupes and shadow [that we used] to create a grungy romantic feeling,” Ffrench tells Vogue. Taking cues from the made-up looks of male K-Pop stars, Ffrench purposefully created looks that drew out individuality. “The makeup was there to enhance the character of each person,” she adds.
Blink and you’d miss it, but those emo peepers were one example in a week of idiosyncratic makeup looks at the men’s shows that ran the beauty gamut from subtle flourish to full-blown statement. At Kiko Kostadinov, inner-eyes were decorated with dabs of space-age silver; Chinese designer Feng Chen Wang had rusty-gold glitter splashed over eyes so that they almost looked like Venetian masks; while MASU (an upcoming label that showed off the official Paris schedule) made an impact with its gothic-meets-street menswear and models who appeared to be sobbing sparkling tears.
Those dangling teardrops turned out to be strings of transparent resin that makeup artist Kanako Yoshida had created. “I thought of them as inner tears that can’t be shown to others,” Yoshida tells us. “It was about mixing strength and stoicism with delicacy.” As well as the tears, Yoshida also strung the resin together in dew-drenched spiderwebs that hung across the face like masks, and painted on lashings of glimmering eyeshadow. There was no grand statement on deconstructing masculinity here, simply a show of depth and sensitivity. Boys do cry, after all.
Whether fake tears or glitter, makeup on the men’s runways is feeling more convincing each season–and, at least in some cases, more replicable. Similarly to Kiko Kostadinov, Swedish brand Our Legacy also showed subtly sparkly eyes that makeup artist Sofia Foiera explained were inspired by “early 2000s girls who wake up late in the morning with their make-up still on after partying all night.” To enhance that carefree vibe, she applied the eye glitter directly to the under-eye with her fingers, “with little regard for perfection.”
It was a good example of a no-boundaries approach to the casual joy of makeup, which the self-taught Foiera says everyone should feel free to partake in, however they identify. “Everything I learned [about makeup] is thanks to social media,” she said. “Even the most inexperienced guy can achieve it just by scrolling through their screens.”
