Lisa Eldridge, movie star make-up artist and founding father of her eponymous make-up model, says this form of make-up maximalism and dramatic kinds will at all times thrive on social media. However there’s one thing about blush that gives a type of escapism and enjoyable that we are able to look towards in actual life, too. “Blush will at all times be one of the vital joy-sparking elements of make-up utility,” Eldridge says.
“It’s about discovering pleasure within the ritual of magnificence,” provides Pat McGrath, movie star make-up artist and founding father of PatMcGrath Labs. At Vogue World 2025: Hollywood, McGrath reworked a handful of fashions into French Revolution–period doyennes, vibrant pink cheeks included. “After seasons of minimalism, persons 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 rise up .”
However Antoinette’s precise routine was unsurprisingly fairly in depth. Eldridge calls Antoinette’s notorious toilette ritual (which incorporates cleaning with the Eau Cosmetique de Pigeon, constituted of the juice of water lilies, melons, cucumbers, lemons, and stewed pigeons; firming with an astringent made with grapevines known as Eau des Charmes; and a signature face masks manufactured 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 operating rampant within the 18th century, and girls had 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 known as mouches in cute small shapes akin to hearts, moons, and stars, and the heavy, vibrant blush. For these of the upper class, Eldridge says that the colour purple was additionally an vital image to the aristocracy; it indicated their standing and that blush was utilized in enormous, exact, and vibrant circles.
By the 1780s, magnificence developments began to maneuver in the 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 outstanding. “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 concentrate on that exact same opulent, romantic flush. “Delicate but dramatic. Refined, but lively,” 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.”
