Does the "Clean Girl" Makeup Look Belong on the Runway?
Beauty details are not a distraction — they’re a vital part of fashion month.
At fashion month Spring/Summer 2026, the beauty looks are just as fundamental as the garments are. For designers, hair and makeup are an artistic medium to extend their collections’ ethos far beyond the realm of fashion. Yet, with the whole world watching, fashion houses continue to send bare-faced models down the runway. Consequently, the no-makeup makeup look has become a staple of fashion month. In the midst of the avant-garde glam and innovative beauty details, the clean girl aesthetic continues to dominate the runway at large.
Beyond fashion month, stripped-down makeup occupies a large portion of the beauty landscape. On TikTok, Gen Z is trading smokey eye looks and mermaid waves for glass skin and slicked-back buns — and as a result, editorial makeup is few and far between on the platform.
In addition to forecasting future trends, runway beauty has historically served as a major component to the shows themselves. In the 2000s, Pat McGrath and John Galliano sent a multitude of intricately conceptualized makeup looks down the Dior runway — but in 2025, designers have found in comfort in abandoning beauty details altogether.
View this post on Instagram
Moreover, some brands maintain that a toned-down makeup look ensures that the garments aren’t “overshadowed.” Inversely, beauty details aren’t intended to distract from the collection itself nor compete for attention — rather, they serve as a way to tie into the designer’s overarching vision. The notion that makeup distracts from the collections doesn’t only misinterpret beauty’s intention, but it severely undermines its role.
While Luar and ASHISH‘s SS26 shows treated beauty like an essential part of the equation, Marco Rambaldi and Roberto Cavalli relied on the formulaic fresh-faced look — which, rather than shaping the show, neither enhances the collections’ concepts nor adheres to them. Rather, clean girl makeup inadvertently subscribes to the idea that makeup isn’t a necessity when you possess natural perfection.
View this post on Instagram
On social media, beauty trends seamlessly integrate into marketing tactics. Brands often lean into viral beauty moments and use that momentum to shape what products consumers deem worthy of spending their money on. Furthermore, runway beauty has always existed in spite of commercialized trends.
Rather than being a platform to mimic the most viral beauty looks, fashion month has inherently allowed makeup artists and designers to create despite the status quo. Instead, no-makeup makeup is rampant on fashion month runways — further saturating what’s already flooding our TikTok feeds.
While clean girl makeup has already been embedded into social media and our everyday routines, its existence at fashion month only stifles the runway’s ability to be a space for innovation and artistry. Beyond that, the runway should be the one informing TikTok trends — not the other way around.
For more runway beauty, read about the best beauty moments from fashion month SS26.
