Flashback: How FASHION has Looked at Beauty
Beauty, by decade.
By Laura deCarufel
Image from October 2004
La plus ça change? “Fashion is awash with some of the most vivid, intense shades we’ve ever seen, and there is, of course, a new ‘face’ to go with them. There’s a boldness in the lips and the eyes, and in the way the colors are combined.” Those words are from our Fall 1985 issue, but the power pigments message is just as relevant to Spring 2007. Like fashion, beauty is a revolving door of references from the past, interpretations of the future—and creative mixes of the two.
Decades used to be easier to define. A model from our Summer 1979 issue looks as if she grew up under Helmut Newton’s disco ball: Her hair is crimped, her cheeks and eyes perfectly contoured, her mouth a scarlet exclamation point on an already exciting canvas. The ’80s celebrated a softer glamour. In March 1985, we reported on the “shimmering tints of peach, lavender, mint, pink…subtle harmonies of spring’s gentle garden shades,” while our Holiday 1985 cover featured rich raspberry lips and violet eyeshadow. The ’90s played with grunge and androgyny, and the long, straight hair and minimally made-up faces of our models reflected the shift in tone.
Post-millennium, the term “modern beauty” is as wide open as Lisa Cant’s gaze. There is the sexy, tousled hair and dewy skin of a glowing Christina Applegate (Summer 2004), and the introduction of the doe-eyed, doll-face model, à la Heather Marks (May 2005). Marks’ cover—with big ’80s-inspired hair and even bigger makeup—also showcases our current obsession with riffing on past beauty ideals, as does Chloë Sevigny vamping in our September 2003 issue with crimson lips and Veronica Lake waves. It’s an anything-goes approach—which might be as accurate a distillation of this decade as feathered Dynasty hair was of the ’80s.
First published in FASHION Magazine May 2007
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