“Grunge” Makeup Is Trending, But Everyone’s Missing the Point
Photo: Getty ImagesSave this storySave this story
Grunge is back. Or at least in the beauty world, it supposedly is; according to Pinterest’s just-released fall trend report, searches for terms like “’90s grunge makeup,” “soft grunge makeup look,” and “messy grunge makeup” have all doubled or tripled in recent months… but interest in one particular term is spiking far more than the rest: “Clean grunge” makeup, searches for which are up more than 600 percent on the platform. If you were around in the mid-90s, that might inspire the same reaction I had, which was, “Huh?” Grunge is inherently the opposite of clean—that’s why it’s called what it is—so what would that even look like?
Turning to social media for answers only left me more confused as to what constitutes grunge makeup by 2025 standards. When I search for “grunge makeup” and similar terms on TikTok, two distinct looks repeat themselves: the first, a swampy wash of brown eye shadow paired with dark matte lipstick; the other, a sharply contoured face punctuated by a gently smudged black cat eye. Instagram offers much of the same with a little sparkle here and there for kicks. Over on Pinterest, just about anything goes when you search for “clean grunge” and the like: amid similar smudged eyeliner looks, I saw glitter haphazardly smeared around the eyes, punchy graphic eyeliner designs, shimmering cut-creases, colorful halo eyes, and seemingly bare faces topped with grayish nude lipstick, to describe just a few. I couldn’t identify a true thread of commonality among any of the “grunge” looks I found on social media, except maybe an inclination toward cool-toned colors and a focus on the eyes.
Amid this quest to pinpoint the true definition of modern grunge, I realized two things. One: In this sociopolitical climate, it was only inevitable that there’d be a growing desire to look “grunge.” Two: In this hyper-algorithmic digital climate, it was also inevitable that grunge would be wholly misunderstood.
You don’t need to have been around for its conception in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s to know that the grunge aesthetic didn’t appear out of thin air. A crop of alternative rock bands out of the gloomy Pacific Northwest (mostly Seattle) became known for a groggy, distorted sound and angsty lyrics revolving around depression, addiction, and mistrust of authority. Their unkempt looks were just as much a form of protest as their lyrics, all in the name of defying societal norms. Men in the scene grew their hair out long and painted their nails (Nirvana's Kurt Cobain even wore dresses on stage a couple of times). Women left their hair unstyled if they hadn't cut it all off, they rarely wore makeup, and either rejected feminine fashions or used them as a political statement.
Courtney Love performing with Hole circa 1994.
Photo: Getty Images
(It wasn't a perfect movement by any means, by the way; women and people of color in the scene faced a hefty amount of exclusion and discrimination, and their contributions went largely ignored or were even erased, like in the case of Tina Bell, the Black frontwoman of Bam Bam who later became known as “the godmother of grunge.” I could not even find an immediately licensable photo of her to use in this piece, which is a shame 'cause she had extremely cool haircuts. Anyway, go Google her.)
Local journalists started calling it “grunge” music, and the long story short from there is that the term stuck when record labels (to the dismay of the scene’s leaders) began using it to cast and promote their acts. Bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden blew up in part because of those marketing efforts but even more so because their lyrics deeply resonated with America’s youth, who at the time felt abandoned by the system and fearful of their future (or predicted lack thereof). The genre evolved into a subculture that provided a break from the glossy, apolitical, hyperconsumerist mainstream popular culture of the time, spearheaded by choreographed boybands and pop divas. Though in the end grunge wound up turning into the very thing it sought to protest, a somewhat soulless money-making ploy, its music and aesthetic still defined much of Generation X.
“If we’re doing a smoky cat eye or putting on dark lipstick or smearing glitter on our faces and calling it grunge on social media, we may look ‘alt’ but it’s not grunge at all.”
It’s a tale as old as time for modern rock music subcultures. Before grunge got co-opted by capitalism, the same thing happened to goth in the early ‘80s. After grunge, the same thing happened to emo in the 2000s. Then it happened to indie club rock in the 2010s. They all had formative music with aesthetics to match, and they all lasted long enough to impact certain generations for a lifetime, for better or worse.
Most Popular
HairI Used PRP to Treat My Hair Loss
NailsHailey Bieber's New Faded French Manicure Is Destined to Be a Huge Trend
Nail ArtDua Lipa Took the Polka Dot Manicure Trend to a Trippy New Level
But in a post-TikTok world where a trend can be birthed during your lunch break and die before you’re back at your desk, alternative subcultures simply can’t exist as they used to. The music industry is no longer driven by already-existing cultural movements—culture is by and large manufactured by industries now, and they have a vested interest in keeping our attention spans short and their products inoffensive to the widest swathe of consumers.
Louise Post of Veruca Salt in 1992.
Photo: Getty Images
I think that’s why the blanket term “alt” has become so popular in recent years, even more so “alt girl” as a companion term to “clean girl” and the like. People who love these rock music subgenres have been starved for something fresh they can resonate with, and it seems that as a result we’ve all kind of lumped ourselves into one shared category out of solidarity. But the respective (and wildly different) identities of each subculture got watered down in the process, and what’s left is a rather confused aesthetic that borrows threads of movements past and mashes them up into something lacking meaning.
Most Popular
HairI Used PRP to Treat My Hair Loss
NailsHailey Bieber's New Faded French Manicure Is Destined to Be a Huge Trend
Nail ArtDua Lipa Took the Polka Dot Manicure Trend to a Trippy New Level
It makes sense, then, that the social media search results for “grunge makeup” would be so… not grunge. Some of those looks I described earlier clearly borrowed elements from goth, while others took notes from emo or metal. A lot of them weren’t defined by a specific subculture, more so the general vibe of being “alternative” or, in other words, doing something slightly different from today’s most ubiquitous beauty trend, the “clean” look.
Like the Gen X youths who started the original grunge movement, Zoomers and younger millennials (myself included) also have deep-seated fears about their futures, these days thanks to the economy, climate change, sociopolitical tension, and war. So it does make sense that people are now taking to the term “grunge” in particular; it represents disdain for the system in which we’re expected to participate, and that system feels more dystopian every day if you ask me. But if we’re doing a smoky cat eye or putting on dark lipstick or smearing glitter on our faces and calling it grunge on social media, we may look “alt” but it’s not grunge at all.
The band L7 circa 1992.
Photo: Getty ImagesMost Popular
HairI Used PRP to Treat My Hair Loss
NailsHailey Bieber's New Faded French Manicure Is Destined to Be a Huge Trend
Nail ArtDua Lipa Took the Polka Dot Manicure Trend to a Trippy New Level
True grunge rejects beauty standards and the effort it takes to meet them. It rejects the adoption of trends and the purchase of products for the sake of fitting in. It rejects feeding into capitalist systems that make rich people richer and poor people poorer. In today’s world, looking authentically grunge would mean largely rejecting the beauty industry and internet beauty culture rather than concocting new makeup looks (with shiny new products) that we can attach a recycled buzzword to. It would look like zits and dark circles and undyed roots and unplucked eyebrows and visible body hair. There are plenty of people out there embracing all these things and more—but I’m willing to bet none of them are posting about how grunge they are on TikTok.
Julia Fox Has One Regret—Interview
PauseSave this storySave this story
All products featured on Allure are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Julia Fox just took a shower. When she answers the creaky, wooden front door of her Harlem brownstone, I’m looking down at tan sock-clad feet before panning up to swishy black lounge pants and a tight white muscle tank splashed with black, all-caps text: BEING SEXY CONFIDENT BITCHY AND WELL DRESSED DOES NOT MEAN I LACK EMOTIONAL DEPTH. Her dark, wet hair is pushed back and out of her face, bare except for glossy lips.
About a dozen pairs of shoes line the small entryway behind the door, a sea of funky shapes and chunky soles. A pair of silver high-heeled Crocs dripping in baubles rests just a few feet from a small pile of little boys’ sneakers. I ask if I should take mine off, but Fox waves a hand and tells me not to worry about it before ascending the stairs and offering me coconut water. We stop at the second floor’s spacious living and dining room, where she sits on the far end of a small blue-gray sectional couch without so much as gesturing for me to join. It’s the same thing that happens when I go to my best friend’s place to do nothing together for a while. Except this time I’m trying not to gawk too hard at the intimidatingly cool vintage furniture and massive abstract paintings.
“This was the only day I didn't have to work, so I was like, ‘Okay, I'll schedule the interview today,’” she tells me when I ask if this is an average day for her. But talking to me, I say, is still working. “Yeah, but it's not like I have to go out and put makeup on, do my hair. It's way more chill.” Earlier this morning, she loaded her four-year-old son, Valentino, into her used “2018 or something” Dodge Challenger and drove him to school on the Upper East Side, as she always does when he’s not with his dad (ex-husband Peter Artemiev, with whom she co-parents) or tagging along on one of her many work trips. “He's gotten in this weird phase where he doesn't want to go to school, so every morning is a battle of coaxing him into the classroom, and then we have to hug, and then I have to bribe him,” she says. “You know how it goes. It's crazy.”
Christian Siriano dress. To re-create this makeup look: Natasha Denona Xenon Eyeshadow Palette, Addiction Tokyo The Eyeshadow Cream in Black Beach, Make Up For Ever Artist Color Pencil in Endless Cacao, and MAC Cosmetics M•A•Cximal Silky Matte Lipstick in HoneyLove.
I’ve been ushered into the home of one of pop culture’s most misunderstood people. The 35-year-old’s bio reads like that of someone 30 years her senior: Fox has held several multimedia art exhibitions, self-published two books of photography, designed a clothing line, modeled in fashion campaigns, acted in films both praised and panned, directed a short film, written a memoir (provocatively titled Down the Drain), and recorded a divisive debut pop single, among plenty of other things. And yet she is often boiled down to the once-paramour of a rapper whose name isn’t worth repeating. Every move she makes seems to inspire excitement and loathing in equal measure, and Reddit debates abound about whether her looks are artful or trashy.
I’m not immune to this misunderstanding, seeing as I show up expecting the version of Julia Fox who wears clothes incorporating condoms and dry-cleaning bags and hair extensions. At the very least, I expect the signature blacked-out eye makeup that launched a thousand tutorials and just as many hate comments. But defying expectations is kind of Fox’s whole thing, whether she means to or not.
“The way people identify you is very much based on their perception of themselves, and people are going to look at you and take whatever they will.” Her subtle but distinctive vocal fry washes over every word. She’s laid her baby pink phone face down at her side on the couch right next to a matching baby pink vape pen that she picks up at times but never hits; her long gel nails, also baby pink, softly clack against it when she talks with her hands.
“To a New Yorker, [my style] is normal… But I could see how someone who's not used to that would be like, ‘What's wrong with her? What drugs is she on? What an attention-seeking whore. Oh my God, the makeup is ugly.’ To me, that says more about them than it does about me, because, like, damn, you've never gone to the theater? You've never gone to a show, a museum, a fashion show? You've never opened an art book?”
Her styling choices can be deeply referential of history, culture, and classical or modern art, but also confrontational, raunchy, and intentionally confusing at the same time. In May, she made a public appearance in a look best described as “period glam”: a T-shirt printed with the image of an antique bed and the words “Ladies Night,” paired with corset-inspired thigh-high stockings and a pair of lacy white panties splattered in fake blood at the crotch. Fox calls it an ode to “the part of femininity that we keep to ourselves, which is bed rotting on your period.” Media coverage of the outfit inspired such comments as, “She needs to be BANNED from all social media,” and “That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.”
Fox might embody a pop art painting at one appearance and wear little but a corset and tights to the next. “If I'm going to put on an outfit… It can never just be a pretty outfit. It has to have some kind of meaning that I can tap into then play that character. Some sort of thread that aligns with who I am.” Her unashamedness, it seems, is partly what makes Fox a fashion hero in the eyes of some and a harlot in others’. To Fox, it’s all one big art piece, and “art is supposed to be polarizing.”
“Am I going to chase the way I used to look, or am I going to evolve and see what's on the other side?”
Largely cutting men out of her life is what she credits (alongside motherhood) to this relatively newfound freedom in fashion and beauty. “I don't have to entertain men anymore.” In 2024, Fox revealed that she’d stopped having sexual and romantic relationships with men more than two years prior. I wonder out loud if she ever misses being with them, and the “No, not at all,” I get in response is paired with a hint of a satisfied smirk and a gentle shake of her head.
“The way my life is, I can't see why a man would be beneficial. I'm laser-focused on being a good mom, on being a good provider, on making my dreams come true. There's just so much more you can do with your time than waiting around to see if a guy's going to text you back or not.” There may come a day in the far-off future when she meets a guy she wants to date, but for right now, they’re wholly unappealing.
“The way my life is, I can't see why a man would be beneficial.”
Maybe that’s what allowed Fox to finally come to an understanding of her sexuality. “I'm pansexual; I could be attracted to anyone and anything,” she says. “If it were just down to the physical, I'm more attracted to the female body. Men don't do it for me at all [physically], but I can be attracted to a man's mind. I'm a vibes person.”
Christian Cowan top and skirt.
To hear her say this so confidently is a surprise. Last year, the internet mistook an offhand remark Fox made on TikTok as a coming-out declaration of lesbianism. She later clarified in an interview that she thought she might be a lesbian and that she’d be “up for a relationship with a woman.” Since then, Fox has “definitely had crushes and did some stuff [with women], but it's never gotten to full relationship status.”
“If it were just down to the physical, I'm more attracted to the female body.”
Still, deciding she’s pansexual wasn’t a simple conclusion to arrive at. “I think women have a harder time [realizing they’re queer] because we are so programmed to perform for men.” But the signs were always there: Throughout her life, Fox has consistently found herself in friendships with female “psycho codependent besties” fueled by possessiveness. “Looking back, I'm like, ‘Oh my God, we were in a relationship.’ But there was no way I was going to admit that to myself, and I couldn't because so much of my survival was hinged upon men taking care of me.”
“I'm pansexual; I could be attracted to anyone and anything.”
It’s possible that making those aforementioned dreams come true feels far more attainable without romantic interests eating away at her time anyway. “I unfortunately can't commit a hundred percent of myself. I'm traveling all the time.” The work that keeps her so busy these days is mostly acting, and Fox intends to keep it that way. “I also really want to write more. On this day off, for instance, if I wasn't going to do this [interview], I would be downstairs in my office just writing. I'll write a script in two days. I wrote one recently about a grandma who decides she wants to fulfill her dream of being a pageant queen.”
September will mark one of Fox’s biggest acting gigs to date with the theatrical release of HIM, a horror movie produced by Jordan Peele about the inner workings of fame and power in professional football. Fox plays Elsie White, the wife of a veteran quarterback (Marlon Wayans), who takes a special interest in the young player (Tyriq Withers) he mentors. You’ll instantly recognize her influence when she delivers such artful lines as, “Pop this jade egg in your pussy” with perfectly performative sincerity. Aside from the butt-length extensions in her hair, Elsie looks just like Fox normally does in real life, down to the graphic eye makeup and chiseled cheekbones and bleached eyebrows. It’s an interesting creative choice, considering there isn’t a single football WAG who looks or dresses remotely like Fox, but one could argue she’s making fun of what so many take her to be: a gimmick.
“I'm just so not like that [character],” she says when I ask what she made of Elsie’s influencer tendencies. “People are like, ‘Why don't you start a makeup line?’ Is that what the world really needs, though?” She’d feel like “such a loser” if she plastered her face on products for the hell of it. (Though she’s not opposed to working with existing beauty companies. Earlier this year, she was one of the faces of the “I Only Wear MAC” campaign, posing naked in a New York City subway car to promote the brand’s new nudes collection.) Other celebrities can launch as many lines as they want, though. “Also, I'm not a celebrity. I hate that word.” Her nose scrunches up like something smells bad in here.
“I'm not a celebrity. I hate that word.”
Why? “I just don't think I'm a celebrity. I still remember the first time I was ever described as that and the feeling of ick that came over me.” Fox has said in the past that she always knew she’d be famous one day, whether she wanted to or not. Graduating from relative obscurity to NYC It girl to mainstream recognition “just felt natural,” but that isn’t necessarily a good thing.
“Do you resent your fame?” I ask. “Yeah, of course. I feel like all famous people do, but they don't want to say it because it's like, ‘Oh, woe is me.’ Fame is this thing that happens to you. You aren't famous because you chose it. You can feed it, but ultimately, the power is all in other people's hands. People want to take, take, take, take, take, and they would take even if there was nothing left to give.”
Stella McCartney dress.
That fame comes with a certain kind of microscope these days, the type internet detectives use to speculate on the plastic surgeries celebrities are purportedly getting done. Fox doesn’t seem to mind it; she’s in favor of putting all her various cosmetic procedures out there. “It's super important when you become famous or a public figure to be transparent,” she says. She tells me she started getting filler and Botox around the age of 21 and has also discussed undergoing liposuction, a rhinoplasty, and veneers in past interviews. “Now, when I see someone and I can tell they've never done anything…I wish I could go back and be that person. I was so hung up on this idea that I needed to be attractive to men so that I could survive. ”
According to her, she hasn’t gotten anything done recently—apparently, not even the thing you’re thinking of. “I probably will [get more work done one day], but I'm just not as concerned with it right now.”
There’s “something to be said,” she says, about the beauty of an older woman with unaltered features—but that doesn’t mean she isn’t scared of looking or being older one day. “That's what I think I'm the most scared of, feeling old, and there are times where I feel old…Tired, over it, disillusioned.” What soothes the rub is having developed a stronger sense of self, which got lost in Fox’s quest for protection and attention via conventional beauty. “When you're young and hot, it’s like that's your identity. Then you're like, shit, I need to stay young and hot.”
“Now when I see someone and I can tell they've never done anything… I wish I could go back and be that person."
But at 35, she’s approaching what she calls a crossroads. “Am I going to chase the way I used to look, or am I going to evolve and see what's on the other side? It could be something totally different, and I'm choosing to go that way. I just want to see who's there waiting for me,” she says. “It'll definitely be uncomfortable, but I think I'm ready for it.”
The person on the other side might end up looking a little different from the one people love or hate or tolerate today, but it’s a safe bet she’ll still be the same Julia Fox at the core. Let it be understood, straight from the horse’s mouth, who that actually is: “I'm thorough as fuck, and I will go to bat for the people I love. I'm a mother, and that makes me inherently tough as hell but also compassionate and empathetic. I can be really vulnerable, and I think there's strength in that. I'm a badass bitch through and through.”
Julia Fox was photographed at House of Yes in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a location renowned for producing nightlife experiences, dance parties, cabaret shows, and theatrical spectacles.