Lisa Eldridge, celeb make-up artist and founding father of her eponymous make-up model, says this type of make-up maximalism and dramatic kinds will all the time thrive on social media. However there’s one thing about blush that gives a type of escapism and enjoyable that we will look towards in actual life, too. “Blush will all the time be probably the most joy-sparking elements of make-up software,” Eldridge says.
“It’s about discovering pleasure within the ritual of magnificence,” provides Pat McGrath, celeb make-up artist and founding father of PatMcGrath Labs. At Vogue World 2025: Hollywood, McGrath remodeled a handful of fashions into French Revolution–period doyennes, vibrant pink cheeks included. “After seasons of minimalism, individuals are craving artistry once more.”
The Lore
With its dreamy Rococo-style affect, we regularly idealize Marie Antoinette’s magnificence routine. “There’s a deep romance to Rococo magnificence,” says McGrath. “It’s fantasy, femininity, and riot unexpectedly.”
However Antoinette’s precise routine was unsurprisingly fairly intensive. Eldridge calls Antoinette’s notorious toilette ritual (which incorporates cleaning with the Eau Cosmetique de Pigeon, produced from the juice of water lilies, melons, cucumbers, lemons, and stewed pigeons; firming with an astringent made with grapevines referred to as Eau des Charmes; and a signature face masks fabricated from two teaspoons of cognac, one-third cup of dry milk powder, lemon juice, and one egg white) and make-up routine a “complicated political efficiency.”
By the point she made it to cosmetics, blush was utilized for a number of causes. Smallpox (and its complexion-ruining results) was working rampant within the 18th century, and girls have been looking for methods to cover the darkish marks and scars left on their faces. To do that, they turned to cream white powder for full face protection, including on fake magnificence marks referred to as mouches in cute small shapes reminiscent of hearts, moons, and stars, and the heavy, vibrant blush. For these of the upper class, Eldridge says that the colour pink was additionally an essential image to the aristocracy; it indicated their standing and that blush was utilized in big, exact, and vibrant circles.
By the 1780s, magnificence traits began to maneuver in direction of extra natural-looking make-up. Eldridge says that main as much as her execution, Antoinette used her powder sparingly and that brilliant rouge on her cheeks was much less distinguished. “She was inadvertently shedding all her outward symbols that signaled her standing and disrupted the system of Versailles,” Eldridge says.
What’s “Marie Antoinette blush?”
Again within the fashionable world, McGrath describes “Marie Antoinette blush” as a deal with that exact same opulent, romantic flush. “Delicate but dramatic. Refined, but vigorous,” she says. “It’s not a contour second; it’s a bloom of shade that radiates from the middle of the face outward, like candlelight or porcelain.”
