May your days be merry, bright, and awash in glitter like it’s 1999. The Y2K redux is here and ready to make a splash on the holiday party scene. The way make-up artist Marcelo Gutierrez sees it, there’s no time like the present to return to—and reimagine!—the brazen shine and shimmer of the early noughties. “We’re living in a time where the world feels a little bit harsh; Y2K was a freer, more experimental time,” muses Gutierrez. “There’s no better time than the holidays to revisit a time very much oriented in party and youth.”
Amid the rise of the Internet, the early 2000s ushered in a cyber-inflected beauty aesthetic that, two decades later, Gen Z can’t get enough of. “I feel that the way the younger generation is reinterpreting the era is through its colors and textures: metallics, glitters, and an array of pastels you see reflecting off of a CD,” explains Gutierrez.
To help you ring in the season—and populate your make-up mood board—Gutierrez is putting a Y2K-inspired twist on wintertime glamour with models Jazzelle Zanaughtti, Jordan Daniels, and Simona Kunst. There are metallic lips, frosted complexions, holographic lids, and bejewelled eyebrows that catch the light and reflect it back in all the right ways. “All these looks carry a sense of playfulness and exploration,” says Gutierrez. “I love makeup that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Below, four holiday makeup looks for putting your best party face forward—the Y2K way.
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Holographic lids
“Lilac has been everywhere,” says Gutierrez, who can’t get enough of the soft purple shade. Here, he encases Jazelle’s gaze in the hue by layering opalescent pigments over a pearlescent lilac shadow, from the lash line up to the brows. A crystal-clear pout and a dewy glow balance out the prismatic look.
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Frosted skin
“Jordan looks like she stepped out of a diamond iced river,” says Gutierrez, who administered hazy washes of silvery shimmer on her face and body to ice queen effect. “There’s something really sensual and beautiful about decorating your skin like this,” he says. A glossy pout and an icy gleaming gaze complete the “winter snow bunny fantasy.”
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Metallic lips
A red lip may be a holiday classic, but it’s getting a flashy remix this season by way of a frosted hot magenta mouth. “You want to shine from every angle,” says Gutierrez, who finished the look with fresh skin, “hyper glow” highlighter, and kohl-rimmed waterlines for a “dose of punk.”
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Bejewelled brows
After years of lush arches, trendsetters are instigating a less-is-more attitude. “Everyone was obsessed with the boy brows; now people literally don’t have brows,” laughs Gutierrez. All the better to accessorise with an ombré stack of Swarovski stones graduated from candlelight yellow to a fiery red. “It’s elevated in a festive way,” he says. “Brows can feel like a piece of jewellery.”
This story was originally published on British Vogue.
