Temperatures are low, nights are long, and cuffing season is in full swing. But what are the most up-to-date hair, beauty, and fashion trends you should be following this year to turn heads during the holidays? We asked around and all the beauty experts we talked to agree that this winter, like all winters since the emergence of anatomically modern humans, the trendiest look is simply being good looking.
“As long as you’re conventionally attractive, you can pretty much wear anything you want this – and every other – winter,” says style and beauty influencer Jennifer Parker. “Are you cute? Then go ahead, wear a Russian fur cap. They’re very warm and everyone will be like, omg, Russian fur caps are so cute. They are not. They’re only cute when they’re on someone who’s already cute. Which you are, congratulations.”
In past years, youth, wealth, whiteness and fame have been as in vogue as being conventionally attractive, but this winter is all about paring back and embracing the minimalism of just being gorgeous.
“This year’s craze for conventional attractiveness is focused on equality and inclusion. For example, you can totally be poor and pretty. It’s harder – so I’m told – but it’s doable,” Parker says. “Just because you’re working class doesn’t mean you can’t have great skin covering a symmetrical skeleton with a platonically ideal ratio of muscle to body fat. Skeletal symmetry and platonic ideals of beauty are both very big this year.”
“Look, the fashion and cosmetics industries are first and foremost industries, their goal is to get you to buy more things by telling you that your jeans aren’t cool anymore or that you need a special kind of lip gloss to look pretty, but they’re lying to you to make money,” Parker explains.
“You don’t need to get rid of your favourite skinny jeans or buy expensive eyeshadow palettes to be fashionable. You just need to fit the narrow and fairly static definition of beauty that pretty much all of Western society already agrees on.”
“Does anyone look at photos of Marilyn Monroe from 1960 and say ‘her hairstyle and clothes are old-fashioned’? Of course not. Beauty is always on trend,” says Parker. “So wear what you wanna wear. Assuming you’re somewhere in the ballpark of Monroe’s level of beauty. If you’re not, don’t even worry about what you wear, nobody cares what you look like anyway.”
Gazing ahead, our style experts are predicting that conventional attractiveness will continue to be the prevailing trend in spring, and summer, and autumn, and also next winter.
