SThirty years have passed since 1996 and yet, some iconic beauty looks they are still part of our aesthetic imagination. Why do we still like them so much? A slightly smudged smokey eye or a frost effect gloss is enough to immediately return to the years in which make-up stopped being simple decoration and became an identity: among models, video clips and female icons who redefined, once and for all, the way of experiencing beauty.
Beauty of the 90s: why 1996 changed the world of make up
It was 1996, the Spice Girls were singing on MTV “Wannabe” and Alanis Morissette “Ironic”. Today, aesthetics nineties it re-emerges forcefully on social networks such as Instagram and TikTokwhere, among blue eyeshadows frost and overlining lips edged with brown pencil, we return to talking about an extremely nostalgic aesthetic.
But why so much interest? 1996 marked an extremely precise transition, the one in which beauty stopped being alone an aesthetic question, and it became a visual language that reflected the culture, music and attitude of those years, pop.
The beauty looks and beauty icons of 1996
From left: Kate Moss, Spice Girl Geri Halliwell and Pamela Anderson (Credits: GettyImages)
Kate Moss and the “less is more” aesthetic
Her face, immortalized by photographer Mario Testino and often associated with Calvin Klein campaigns, Kate Moss brings a fragile beauty to the foregroundsubtracted, light years away from the polished perfection of the previous decade. The skin is always almost free of make-up, the lips remain neutral.
His aesthetic – and that of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, who worked at Calvin Klein – inspires a radical minimalism: impalpable foundations, neutral palettes, textures that reveal real skin. They talked about authenticity, but also about disruption. And precisely for this reason it remains relevant: today as then, the idea of ”effortless” beauty continues to be one of the most aspirational.
Pamela Anderson, sensual glamour
At the opposite extreme from Kate Moss’ minimal aesthetic was Pamela Anderson, icon of sensual, glamorous and beauty hyper-feminine. Her beauty look was characterized by Very thin eyebrows, marked smokey eyes, precisely contoured lips: each element was emphasized precisely and never randomly.
This type of glamor finds a natural source even on the most spectacular catwalks, such as those of Versace. Today, this aesthetic has been recovered by Gen Z who has rekindled interest in the Y2Y style, artificial and deliberately extreme. His secret? Don’t look for naturalness, but visual power.
