Strobing, half-face makeup, multi-masking and clown contouring. These four beauty trends were so influential on social media last year, they changed consumer perceptions and boosted beauty sales.
#ThePowerOfMakeUp
This trend started late 2015 when 21-year-old beauty blogger NikkieTutorials posted an image that showed half her face with makeup and the other half without to demonstrate that women have the right to choose to wear as much or as little makeup as they wished without shame. What followed was hundreds of women posting images of themselves wearing half a face of makeup
Strobing
Kicked off by celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Beyonce and Cara Delevingne, strobing nearly caused the social airways to implode. To the uninitiated, strobing is the technique of layering highlighters on areas of the face that naturally hit the light to achieve that elusive glowing-from-within look. The phenomenon has been so great that sales of highlighter products rose by 48.5 percent in the UK during 2015.
Clown contouring
Similar to strobing, but clown contouring is the trend where the face is defined by painting concealer and contouring product shapes that are then blended away for a perfectly contoured complexion. This trend went viral when BellaDeLune beauty blogger Esther Isabel Amado Romo uploaded a video to her YouTube channel performing the makeup technique. Again, the social feeds went wild with other beauty enthusiasts posting their own clown contouring.
Multi-masking
Multi-masking is just how it sounds; it’s the beauty regimen where a person applies multiple skin masks at the same time to address different issues. Multi-maskers started uploading selfies to Instagram to show off their multi-masking skills and, before long, another viral beauty technique was born. Demonstrating the power of social media, this trend, saw a rise in face mask sales by 22.8 per cent in the UK, says the NPD Group.
Have your say: What do you think of these makeup trends?