Time to dig out your teenage make-up bag
IT HASN’T BEEN easy to be 100% on-board with every aspect of fashion’s Y2K style revival. Sure, we could see the benefits of breaking free from the skinny jean tyranny – and a bum bag is pretty effective for hands-free accessorising – but for every good bit there’s also been a ripped-to-the-pubis waistband or frighteningly flammable faux-fur bucket hat. So far, so-so – but now that iconic noughties brand Bourjois is hitting our shores again, cementing a nostalgia beauty revival, we’re listening.
After it was dropped from the UK in 2019, we mourned the loss of the high street brand delivering French chic on a budget. It was also the first ‘grown-up’ make-up brand lots of us invested in as teens. From the rite-of-passage Little Round Pot Blusher – whose monocle-sized mirror left many over-pinked (the product is great: just use your own brush and a full-size mirror) – to the was-a-dupebefore-dupes-were-a-thing Healthy Mix Foundation, the products were affordable, easy to use and, crucially, worked really well.
Bourjois, available exclusively at Superdrug (online from 7 July and rolling out in-store over the summer), is the latest nostalgia brand to re-emerge. Cult US spa brand Bliss, famed for its flagship Sloane Avenue store where you could get your nails done while watching an episode of SATC, reappeared on the shelves of Boots last year, and Smashbox is rescuing and resurrecting two cult products from the much missed Becca make-up line.
The motives behind our desire for nostalgia seem clear: with beauty becoming ever more complex, from 17-step skincare regimes that require a chemistry degree to decipher, to advanced make-up techniques that need Mua-level skills, could it be that we all crave getting back to something a little easier? To remember when all we needed was a pot of glitter and our finger to enjoy a good night out?
Nostalgic beauty takes us back to a simpler time – but that doesn’t mean the products don’t have merit. Make-up artist Liz Martin agrees. ‘I’ve got some of the same staples in my kit that I did in the early ’90s. MAC Spice lip liner is a forever product, it’s a universal colour that contours for today’s look as well as it did for Pammy and the supermodels. What goes around comes around and good products stand the test of time.’
And the nostalgia rush is not over yet. Over on Tiktok, the land of beauty inspiration, the future of beauty nostalgia looks set to involve hair gems and, wait for it… a take on Sun-in with Sun Bum’s Lightening Spray. Now all we need is a petition to bring back The Body Shop’s Dewberry.