Of all the lessons in respectability imparted by my mother, I retained only two: Never ask someone if they’re invited to a party and never fall asleep without removing your makeup. The first rule I break on a weekly basis, as it is unrealistic after the fifth grade. The second is gospel. I can count on one pillowcase the times I have skipped the sink, or splashed makeup remover in the general direction of my face, and flung myself into bed. As I plummeted into unconsciousness, I indulged in thoughts of Kate Moss, emerging from the Thames, cigarette in mouth, Champagne in hand. This image was corrected by the bathroom mirror the next morning. Having been chastened by the organic version of the slept-in look, I was wary of doing it intentionally. And yet, in the informal antechambers of TikTok or in the hallowed halls of Dior and Chanel, languorous lids have begun appearing once again.
It should be said that this look, like its cousins ( ’90s and indie sleaze), is the jurisdiction of the eyes. Which makes sense. In real life, lipstick fades after drinking, kissing, and holding items in your mouth while digging for your keys. “If you do too much elsewhere,” explains makeup artist Lisa Eldridge, “it will just look like you made a mess.” Eldridge, who is known for smudging the lids of Dua Lipa and Kate Winslet, has an eponymous line of pencils and shadows and a well-honed horror of “paint-by-numbers style.” When she talks about makeup, she could be talking about the aesthetics of the entire century: “We came out of that hyper-perfected, heavily contoured look of the ’80s and into grunge, and then we got sucked back into the vortex, almost by mistake, because of YouTube tutorials.” Slept-in makeup is a reaction against that, she argues. And it’s just “eternally alluring, so tangibly sexy and yet vulnerable.”
On a particularly dreary Sunday afternoon, Dior makeup artist Benoit Dumont arrived at my apartment with portable lights and a trunk of pointy eye pencils. Let the flinching begin. Dumont, who set to work recreating a look originally conceived by Dior makeup creative director Peter Philips, tells me that the secret to slept-in makeup is to line the inner rims of the eyes and then extend the line straight out, following the angle of the eye to avoid the more dramatic look of someone about to sabotage her record deal. He then added dark brown shadow and, to my surprise, no mascara. The mascara was added by me, when I attempted to emulate the look. Since applying pencil to the inner rim of my eyelid would require an anesthesiologist, I combined the drugstore staple Lash Princess mascara with an Hermès eye shadow palette, creating a concentrated high-low of the face.
The feeling of all this, out in the world, was somewhat jarring at first. Like walking around naked, save for a motorcycle helmet. But before long, I felt edgy. Almost too edgy. A guy at my pizza place nodded in respect; the people at the post office seemed surprised when I smiled at them. At dinner, a photographer friend took a step back and gestured at my face in admiration. By the time we met, I had been walking around for hours, tearing up in the cold. I knew everything had migrated south. But the great thing about slept-in makeup is, because it lives on the lash line between smoky and natural, it can suffer a bit of abuse without looking completely deranged. Or as Eldridge put it: “You want it to stay looking the same level of messed up the whole night.”
The aspect of smudged makeup that differentiates it from similar trends is that it has been filched by high fashion from real life, not the other way around. And now it can be returned to its rightful owners: Women with lives. Women who inhabit this look come flashbulbs or overhead office lighting. Women whose parties you’d want to be invited to. Though, I will say, if the champions of the slept-in face were really committed? Nap marks, you cowards.
Hair, Jimmy Paul. Manicurist: Kimberly Choquette. Tailor: Hailey Desjardins.