by Influencer Rachel Rigler, 23, always starts her day with an iced latte, but during a June mid-morning sip and a scroll through Pinterest she saw more than usual in her cup of Joe.
“I was looking at pictures of this bronzy, smoky eye makeup look while I was drinking my latte and I was like — you know, it’s kind of giving latte makeup,” Atlanta-based Rigler said. who immediately took to TikTok to share. tutorial for the look.
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Her launch video has since received over 2.7 million views, 183,000 likes and spawned many spin-offs including matcha makeup, pumpkin spice makeup and mocha makeup (not to be confused with mocha cherry makeup – story a little more success).
“It’s definitely been a gradual build,” Rigler said of the latte makeup momentum, which earned a Hailey Bieber co-sign a month after its debut (when Trendalytics data indicates the trend peaked) and it later ushered in an era of gourmand-inspired beauty aesthetics including strawberry girl makeup, cherry cola lips, blueberry milk nails, tomato girl makeup and the like.
But before that, it was the allover-rosy “cool girl” makeup that had the TikTok beauty community in a cokehold. There was also the Chinese-inspired Douyin makeup, which shared similar minimalist components with its “clean girl” and “that girl” makeup predecessors. office siren makeup – which, in truth, is not so much about makeup but mostly due to the wearing of rectangular glasses à la Giselle Bündchen in “The Devil Wears Prada” – also increased through the ranks.
Now mob wife makeup, characterized by statement lips, full lashes and an allover matte finish, is the latest entrant to TikTok’s broken cycle of beauty aesthetics.
When it comes to exactly what starts a trend, “it doesn’t have to be Hailey Bieber, but it has to be something — someone or something that’s culturally significant,” said Kendall Becker, director of trend strategy and edited by Trendalytics. .
“Sometimes the beginning of a trend is not as important as the person who started it,” said art historian and cultural commentator Seema Rao. “It can be the person at the right height, with the right amount of ‘influence’ to say that a trend is good, to drive it.”
Whatever the catalyst, most of these aesthetics are what Trendalytics classifies as micro-trends, or those that “pop up weekly on TikTok and are usually hyper-specific or reactive to things like celebrity posts,” said Michael Appler, chief operating officer. and creative director at Cancel Communications.
The average microtrend’s lifespan is about six months or less, although “the more specific the trend, the shorter its shelf life,” said Lauren Bitar, Trendalytics’ chief innovation and strategy officer.
During the July-August peak of the trend, latte makeup was netting about 35,000 weekly searches on Google, which in January dropped to just over 4,000 weekly searches. Meanwhile, Mob’s wife peaked on January 20 after entering mainstream discourse in early January, hinting at a potentially shorter lifespan.
“Clean girl,” in contrast, has rare longevity. One of the first aesthetics to gain prominence on TikTok, the trend includes a loud, “no make-up” beauty look but also a certain health-oriented lifestyle; the so-called clean girl is the one who wakes up early, drinks green juice, exercises regularly, does a slicked-back bun and embodies many other stereotypical signs of putting together.
The “that girl” aesthetic is an almost identical concept, which also rose in the summer of 2022, although it was perhaps a little less controversial (“clean girl” which very quickly became known for its exclusive nature and inaccessible).
Unlike most of their peers, both trends have been in and out of prominence since they emerged almost two years ago, they haven’t completely disappeared and even noticeable spikes in search and social life around March 2023, and again last December, according to Trendalytics.
“Something like ‘clean girl’ is one of those looks that’s easy to execute, it can be done using products you already have – it hits a lot of those key factors that make it want to come back again and again,” Becker said.
For beauty creator Alissa Holmes (@alissajanay1), who enjoys showcasing new trends as they emerge, “clean girl” serves as something of a baseline, and guided videos or tutorials can be audience acquisition tool.
“Clean girl makeup is more like my everyday make-up, but posting about trends helps push your content out more and then people start looking, like, ‘oh, it’s her again – now this trend is being done. her’ – some of those people wouldn’t have to’. wouldn’t be able to find you if they weren’t looking for the trend,” said Holmes, who counts more than 800,000 followers on TikTok and typically uploads one video for every new trend she decides to try.
For brands, jumping on these trends can be more hit or miss.
Not only is there a need to boost market speed, which is difficult in itself, but brands that try to buck a trend and miss the mark run the ultimate risk: looking too tough.
“The hope is that a brand would be able to take advantage of an organic trend, but I think that’s also when the fatigue and frustration comes from the consumer – that’s when they might say, ‘Okay , I’m not playing into that,’ ” Spate co-founder Yarden Horwitz said.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, fast fashion retailers such as Boohoo, Shein and Fashion Nova often integrate trend language into their products and marketing, with Trendalytics data showing that more than 86 products in the Boohoo range reference the trend ” that girl”.
On the other hand, beauty brands are importing these trends into their marketing through influencer content. Armani Beauty, for example, tapped a group of creatives including Meredith Duxbury last fall to direct a “pumpkin spice makeup” campaign, and Holmes says she’s executed several trend-centric briefs for brand partners, notably surrounding latte makeup and warm chocolate makeup.
“It’s about time; if you’re a brand and you’re following a trend, you could be too late and that could date you,” said Cecilia Gates, founder of Gates Creative Agency.
Jade Beguelin, co-founder of 4am Skin, said, “It’s definitely a careful balance; rather than being a trend follower, as a brand you want to be a trend setter – and it can be a slower game sometimes.”
Still, brands can take advantage of trends that clearly align with their identity.
“Category trends can be easier to tap into compared to makeup look trends, which can be a little bit easier,” said Gates, who facilitated a series of lip-como campaigns with MAC Cosmetics. in which the brand tapped into several popular beauties. creators like Jodie Woods and Alissa Ashley to curate their own lipstick, gloss and liner rounds.
“Everyone on TikTok has been talking about their lip combos, and MAC has the variety to back that up. You have to make sure what you’re doing is true to your brand, or you risk looking like you’re all over the place,” Gates said.
In fact, Gates’ distinction between product trends and these more sophisticated “look” trends is increasingly important – especially given how often trendy looks share different relevance with core components.
“A lot of people will look at what’s happening on TikTok and assume they’re looking at a different consumer, or a consumer whose interests change very quickly,” Horwitz said. “A strawberry girl is not that far away from a pure girl, but it shows a completely different feeling.”
Much of the appeal of joining TikTok’s trend du jour isn’t about any particular novelty of the look itself, but rather the act of sharing a new vibe with a community of people doing the same thing.
“Beauty is the most attainable change a person can make for themselves,” said Rao, adding that this low barrier to entry feeds consumers’ desire for constant freshness, while adding to the trend cycle.
The speed of these trends, however, is not as consequential to actual product trends as one might think. Bronze drops, central to the latte makeup look, have continued to see sustained interest in the long-time highlight of latte makeup, growing 218 percent in searches over the past three months compared to last year .
Moreover, the emergence of one trend does not necessarily mean the end of another.
“People are saying [mob wife] It’s the death of a clean girl — our data doesn’t show that,” Horwitz said, adding that searches for “clean girl smudge” remain up 29 percent year over year.
Because of the importance of the right trending name at the right time, mob wife actually shares ideals on the quietly growing Tumblr girl and indie sleaze trends, Horwitz said – the look simply happened to go mega -viral as a mob wife (which some theorize. related to the 25th anniversary of “The Sopranos” being this year).
And while the crowd wife may be responding to the clean girl and quiet luxury aesthetic, “these trends exist in the same ecosystem and they benefit each other,” Appler said.
“We don’t know that the ‘mob wife’ will survive into the fall, but the hair and makeup aesthetic will certainly continue to grow,” said Horwitz.
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