Lace makeup is turning lacework into the beauty trend of autumn 2026
What if this autumn’s most viral makeup look was also its most intricate? Lace makeup is steadily establishing itself as one of the most talked-about beauty trends of 2026, transposing the openwork patterns of lace directly onto skin. Eyelids, temples, lips: the face becomes a surface to adorn, not erase.
From the bathroom to the runway: how to actually try lace makeup
The technique rests on a beguiling ambiguity. It doesn’t necessarily involve pressing a piece of lace against your skin. The most common method is to apply pigment or eyeshadow through an openwork pattern, leaving its imprint behind. The result looks like embroidery without thread, rendered entirely in shadow.
In practice, a small scrap of lace, a dark eyeshadow, and a brush or sponge are all it takes to transform an ordinary smoky eye into something almost textile. On the eyelids, the design stays delicate. At the temples, it turns theatrical. Around the mouth, it edges into lip art. The same idea, then, can travel from an editorial shoot to a selfie in just a few centimetres of skin.
What sets this trend apart from the no-makeup looks that dominated for so long is its unapologetic relationship with decoration. Lace makeup makes no attempt to look like nothing is there: it starts from the premise that a face can be ornamented, dressed, almost stitched.
Pinterest, Meredith Duxbury and the rise of an aesthetic
The numbers back up the enthusiasm. Pinterest has recorded a 120% rise in searches for lace makeup in 2026, driven in part by the handcrafted, lace-edged looks of model Meredith Duxbury, a rising figure among Gen Z beauty creators. The platform had already identified this aesthetic as one of the year’s emerging beauty trends, well before social media picked it up en masse.
On those same platforms, beauty creator Charlotte Roberts helped popularise the concept before it became a playground for the most daring makeup experiments. Lace brings something that recent textures, chrome, wet look, glazed, simply didn’t offer: relief, negative space, an almost obsessive repetition of pattern.
- A 120% rise in Pinterest searches for lace makeup in 2026
- Meredith Duxbury, model and Gen Z creator, among the faces driving the trend
- Beauty creator Charlotte Roberts helped bring the technique to a wider audience online
- The pattern can be applied to the eyelids, temples or around the mouth
- A scrap of lace, a dark eyeshadow and a brush are all you need to recreate the look
Givenchy 2016, Gaultier 2026: lace has always had its place on the runway
To understand where this fascination comes from, you have to go back to the Givenchy spring-summer 2016 show. Under Riccardo Tisci’s direction, makeup artist Pat McGrath created lace masks that covered the models’ faces and necks. The pattern appeared to sit directly on the skin, deliberately blurring the line between makeup, accessory and clothing. The intention was clear: take a romantic vocabulary, lace, veils, adornment, and push it until it became almost unsettling.
Ten years on, the same instinct returns with far less ceremony. The autumn-winter 2026 haute couture season gave rise to Jean Paul Gaultier’s lace lips, a look in which the mouth itself becomes a surface of lacework. The gesture was noted as one of the season’s most artisanal beauty statements.
Between the Givenchy mask and Gaultier’s couture lips, the trend has a solid lineage. Yet its true viral potential lies not in these runway versions, but in their domestic translation, imperfect enough to be recreated in a bathroom.
A dark romanticism that is settling in for the season
Lace makeup speaks to something broader about the direction beauty is taking in 2026. After years defined by perfectly even skin and near-invisible makeup, faces are now demanding line, texture and even a touch of complexity. A black lace pattern pressed onto an eyelid can be enough to tip an everyday look into something far more theatrical.
The result hovers between gothic heroine, Victorian doll and backstage at a couture show. As Halloween approaches, this lacework makeup finds an ideal moment to shine. But its reach extends well beyond the night of 31 October: it embodies a very fashion-forward return of dark romanticism, one that is settling in as a fully fledged aesthetic long after the season ends.
