Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story I’ve always been a lipstick girl . I vividly remember standing before the bathroom mirror at age four painting my lips ruby red with my mom’s Victoria Jackson compact. I still own the very first Clinique lipstick I ever bought (although it sits locked in a keepsake box these days).
Red lipstick was my trademark for years, but during the pandemic, I quit wearing it, mostly because my lips were hidden behind a mask. Then I had a baby, and you can’t kiss chubby cheeks 24/7 with your lips covered in Ruby Woo. Like many others, I swapped my matte lipsticks in favor of tinted balms and glosses, but a few days ago, a certain celebrity had me reaching for my bullet lipstick again—and now I'm noticing bold, color-drenched lips all over the red carpet and runway.
My first inkling that dramatic lips may be inching toward a comeback came courtesy Florence Pugh at the premiere of her new Netflix series, East of Eden. Her makeup artist, Alex Babsky , matched her lips exactly to her ruby necklace with the most gorgeous cranberry-colored lipstick I’ve seen in awhile. Because, like me, celebs have been skipping traditional bold lipstick for glossy finishes or blotted, barely-there stains. After seeing Pugh’s lip—paired with a flush of blush and a strong brow—I went on an archeological expedition in my lipstick drawer to dig out a similar shade.
Florence Pugh and director Zoe Kazan in matching bold lips.
A few days later, Dakota Johnson popped up in Taylor Swift’s “Patient Zero” music video, where both stars apply dark, bold lipstick onscreen to represent their mirrored experience. Several days after that, Johnson posed on the red carpet wearing a stunning crimson hue for the Verity press run.
Celebrities aside, it appears I’m not alone in my newly reignited interest in bold, bright, look-at-me lipstick shades. Commenters on both Babsky and Johnson's makeup artist Georgie Eisdel ’s Instagram posts begged the artists to share shade details. (Spoiler alert: They're custom hues made from a handful of different products and colors.) But the desire remains, leading me to wonder if lipstick “back,” per se.
Getty Images Lipstick never really leaves the trend cycle. There will always be people who prefer a traditional lipstick over a gloss or whatever gloss-balm-stain fusion is trending. (Swift, like me, made red lipstick part of her brand and has been wearing it faithfully for years.) That being said, it feels like we may have reached peak barely there tint and are craving something stronger. Makeup fans have been longing for a return to “2016 makeup,” which was all about ultra-matte, bold lips, often sculpted to perfection with liner and liquid lipstick. According to data from the Spate Popularity Index, which combines insights from Google, TikTok, and Instagram in the United States, searches for “matte lipstick,” “red lipstick,” and “bold lipstick” are all up; matte lipstick in particular grew nearly 19% from September 2025 to August 2026. And in their 2026 Beauty Trend Report, Pinterest noted that maximalist makeup is due for a comeback; in particular, searches for “bold lip combo” have gone up a dramatic 121% on the photo-inspo platform. In addition to that very compelling data, makeup artists told Allure that a bare face with a bold lip was one of their favorite trends for the 2026 fall and winter season.
Curious about a potential comeback, I reached out to a few beauty-world exper…