Photography by Ben HassettSave this storySave this story
Eye shadow died two years ago. Gen Z’s clean girl beauty army buried it with the side part, skinny jeans, and going out tops and danced on its grave, their mouths slicked with lip oil and cherub cheeks dabbed with pocket blush. For years, millennials and Gen X watched paralyzed, fearful of dipping back into their half-used Naked palettes lest they become the subject of a devastatingly-edited TikTok declaring them cringe.
Now, at last, the drought in the shadow space has ended: A steady stream of big, bold palettes are being launched this fall. Palettes with eight, 12, even 18 (!) wells holding hypershine multi-chromes, soft-touch mattes, multidimensional pearl pigments, molten metallics, astral sparkles, and sueded satins have hit the market, largely from makeup artist-founded brands like Pat McGrath Labs, Danessa Myricks Beauty, and Makeup By Mario.
Among the liberators of the clean girl movement is makeup artist Hung Vanngo, who recently debuted his makeup brand with a robust eight eye shadow palettes, each with varying shades of a specific color, like purple, green, or red. “I actually went into the creative process with [even] more than eight palettes, if you can believe it,” he says. (More are coming soon.)
A few seasons ago, launching a brand with more than one eye shadow palette—or even a single eye shadow palette—might have seemed like overkill. But, according to Alexis Androulakis, a product developer and one half of The Lipstick Lesbians duo, today, it feels like meeting the moment. “I think we're seeing the reinvention tour of palettes,” she says.
But the plot twist no one saw coming in this beauty fan-fic is that Gen Z is now into eye shadow, too—the clean girl look be damned.
Just look at the lids of some of the buzziest stars among Gen Z: Chappell Roan is obviously an eyeshadow queen. Jenna Ortega’s been serving up gothy-glam with lots of shadow-based contouring on the eyes. Katseye’s Lara Raj and her pop star sister Rhea are constantly in high-impact shadow looks, ranging from the smoky to the sunset eye.
Even fashion runways have returned to color: there were brightly-hued lids at shows from Anna Sui to Zankov and everything in between (Collina Strada, Area, and Private Policy).
How Eyes Became Everything
For those wondering why eyes have started trending again, makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench has a theory: “We will do clean girl core until we’re bored and then we will do the complete opposite. Happens annually!” She’s right.
After the 2010s, “eye shadow went through a serious slump, and it was because of fatigue and oversaturation,” says Androulakis, referring to the multitude of eye shadow palette launches—Urban Decay Naked, Too Faced Chocolate Bar, and Morphe x Jaclyn Hill among them—during this time. Consumers turned to cheek and lip products instead—and then the same thing began to happen. “Now what we're about to see is the over-saturation in the lip and cheek category, forcing consumers back to eye,” she says. This time around, however, new innovation in the space has resulted in shadows far superior to the dusty shades of yore.
Better Tech, Better Payoff
Advancements in raw materials and in manufacturing processes are introducing us to several varieties of textures, says Androulakis. She points to the deep chocolate brown shade in Danessa Myricks Beauty Lightwork VII as an example: “You're going to feel a texture that's a hybrid between a mousse and a pressed powder.” The palettes of today, she says, “have less fallout, more adhesion to the skin, more dimensional, multi-chromatic effects and are going to make the experience of using eyeshadow way more fun.”
Danessa Myricks Beauty
Lightwork VII Freedom Palette
Sephora
Manufacturers from Korea, Japan and Italy, and even U.S. and Canada are performing unprecedented eyeshadow alchemy, says Androulakis: “They're not just baking the eye shadows over in Italy, they're doing things to them that involve slurrying, back injecting and hybridizing four, sometimes five, different methodologies that we've never seen before.”
Palette Girl Fall
It’s no surprise that many of the brands bringing this technology to the forefront are those with makeup artist founders. “[Your lids are] where you have the most surface area on your face to be playful, and manipulate the light and dark, shadows and lines,” says Androulakis. "Right from your lash line to your brow bone, that whole area is just begging for your art.”
Some of these artists, renowned for their own creativity and for enabling that of others, never stopped launching palettes in the first place. Pat McGrath releases Mothership palettes annually (some years there have been more than one; we’re currently up to number 12) and has a holiday palette out now called Gilded Nirvana. The brand calls it twelve shades of “gilded bliss,” and that may only be slight marketing overreach. The makeup artist Danessa Myricks has made a name—and a brand—for herself by cramming as much retina-searing gleamage into a palette divot as possible. Makeup artist Lisa Eldridge got a head start this summer and gave us five pocket-sized palettes this summer with mattes, metallics, and color-shifting shimmers.
Hourglass also went palm-sized with its six Curator Eyeshadow Palette quads, while Byredo released an 18-pan palette created by makeup artist Lucia Pica called Bibliophillia. Both have metallic, satin, and matte finishes.
Hourglass
Curator Eyeshadow Palette
Amazon
Ulta Beauty
Byredo
Bibliophillia Eyeshadow Palette
Byredo
But Make It Gen Z
While Gen Z’ers admire the likes of Chappell Roan, many are wading into the eye shadow waters more delicately themselves. “Gen Z wants their eyes to feel defined and fresh without looking heavy. So [we as a brand] are not gravitating toward multi-color smoky eyes the way we used to, instead leaning into more soft mattes or neutral tones to sculpt the eye,” says makeup artist Patrick Ta, the founder of Patrick Ta Beauty.
For his part, Vanngo works regularly with A-list clients with massive Gen Z followings—including Selena Gomez—and knows what’s beauty catnip for that audience. “Gen Z may favor the clean girl aesthetic but that doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned eye makeup,” he says. “Eye shadow has evolved.”
Vanngo’s aim was to make shadows that meet people where they are. One of his palettes has matte shades that are a cream to powder formula with high impact pigments that lock down on the lid; there are also satin shades for an upgraded finish without glitter, and then a few metallic shades with a “sophisticated blend of pearls to give maximum reflection and luminosity.”
The neutral palettes sold quickly, but so did the bolder colorways like purple and blue. “It was amazing to see that consumers were just as excited about color as I am, but I never imagined how vocal they would be,” says Vanngo.
It’s Not Just About Color
Some brands are realizing that even glitter, if done right, will find its way onto a Gen Z eyelid. Makeup brands just need to learn how to reel them in. Ta, another bonafide Gen Z makeup whisperer (his clients include assorted Kardashians, Gigi Hadid, and Ariana Grande) launched Major Dimension Eye Illusion Eyeshadow Duos with a “scattered sparkle effect” which he says the younger generation loves “because it feels fresh.”
“That success gave us confidence that eye shadow, especially when done intentionally, resonates,” Ta says. The brand just launched three edits of Artistry Edit Eyeshadow Palettes, a set of six neutral shades in light, medium, and deep colorways to sculpt and contour the eye. Four more shades of the duos came out, as well.
Patrick Ta
Major Dimension Eye Illusion Eyeshadow Duos
Sephora
Kohl's
Patrick Ta
Artistry Edit Eyeshadow Palettes
Sephora
Kohl's
Isamaya
Beauty Core 1 and Core 2 Eyeshadow Palettes
Isamaya (Core 1.0)
Isamaya (Core 2.0)
No one has proved that glitter has a place in makeup more than Ffrench. Arguably, some of the most popular new launches were her Core Palettes, two reboots of her limited-edition Industrial palettes, probably the most fervently-demanded eyeshadow since Urban Decay launched Naked. Fans of the original’s high-glitter pigments and bondage-inspired packaging have been feral for it for years, and those who missed out on collecting the original were waiting impatiently for a re-release. They weren’t shy about making their needs known. “People were asking me in real life and on every single post. [They were in my] comment sections, DMs on Instagram and Tiktok. I was seeing old palettes go for £600 on eBay… it became a cult! They needed to come back,” she says.
And now, they have—and thanks to those new advancements, they’re somehow even better.
