Voguish Vampires Are 2023’s First Viral Beauty Trend
Bid an official farewell to Clean Girls, Euphoria makeup, and doughnut glazing. These beauty trend relics of 2022, as we know it, are dead. And the first big makeup aesthetic of 2023 is, well, decidedly undead.
Enter the Voguish Vampire. The look is simple: long black hair (usually parted down the middle, but not always); exaggerated cheekbones (achieved either through the gene lottery, contouring, or—allegedly—buccal fat removal), a deeply hued natural lip, and a ring of smokey eye makeup. But like all devilish rites, you have to sacrifice something to achieve the look: namely, your bushy eyebrows. Whether covered up beneath makeup, reduced to the finest of lines, bleached, or completely shaved off altogether, the defining trait of the Voguish Vampire is a complete minimization of your natural brows.
The look has been bubbling since last year if not longer, but just as parts of Twitter identified it as a trend, Kylie Jenner logged on Instagram to debut her own take. Much like when Drake jumps on a remix and it becomes a hit all its own, when a Kardashian-Jenner hops on a trend, it’s bound to have countless others imitating it as well.
While a Kardashian-Jenner can popularize a trend, they rarely invent them. While iterations of Goth-inspired and shaved/bleached eyebrows have popped up in recent years on runways, editorials, or on the red carpet for a single look, others have begun adopting the aesthetic as a full-time feature.
Gabbriette Bechtel, the model-turned-member-of-Nasty-Cherry-turned-TikTok coo-, has made a version of the look her signature for years now.
Venezuelan electronic music producer Arca has experimented with bleached brows several times over the years.
In a viral tweet, user @MeatIsMurdur adds the models Amata Alp and Amelia Gray Hamlin to the list. Hamlin’s sudden makeover from reality TV spawn (she’s the daughter of Real Housewife Lisa Rinna) to Balenciaga runway model has turned more than a few heads.
Of, course there’s historical precedent in the modern vampire as well: decades of Goth-girl style inspiration, Rooney Mara’s take on Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s 2011 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptation, and notes of Angelina Jolie’s own memorably Hot Goth Girl phase of the late ’90s and early ’00s.
It should also be noted that the combination of thin eyebrows and dark, straight hair recalls a style popularized by Latinx women in Southern California and Southern Florida in the ’90s and aughts. It’s likely no coincidence that Gabriette and Arca were among the first to popularize this trend.
There’s also a bit of timely rebellion involved in the look—turning against the recent preference for big, bushy eyebrows, and perhaps against the resurgence of a “Satanic Panic” among right wing conspiracy theorists. Jenner herself was briefly pulled into the melee when some claimed a promotional photo for her cosmetics brand featuring Jenner drenched in fake blood was Satanic imagery. What better to way to dismiss the claims than to playfully embrace them?
The drastic look isn’t just for anyone, but we doubt Jenner will be the last to attempt her own version of it in 2023.
