Now that the fall 2026 collections have walked the snowbanked runways of New York, many of our big beauty forecasts from last season have gained new energy. Pastel lids were just as blue at Marc Jacobs’s nostalgic kickoff to the week’s shows, and soon fingertips and toes at Rachel Scott’s Proenza Schouler show were painted in an escapist shade of pale cerulean.
The “Olsen tuck” is suddenly in its fullest swing, this time on a starkly lit 7 for All Mankind runway; the label is in the hands of new creative director Nicola Brognano, who instantly appointed Chloë Sevigny as brand ambassador. The models Brognano sent down his catwalk were styled to slip right into a Smith’s Sunday night at Sway with Sevigny—a downtown spot known for its Olsen twin sightings, each It girl a perfect example of hair that really moves to the beat.
Thrilling are the hints of feminine power. Those clawlike acrylics of last season gave way to an entire vampy, gothy, witchy, femme fatale through-line on the runways. Hillary Taymour credited a “soul-sucking mood” for her Collina Strada show titled The World Is a Vampire, and new Area creative director Nicholas Aburn told Vogue’s Nicole Phelps that “glamour is a word that used to mean magic. When a woman used the way she looked for power, they said, ‘Witch! Magic!’ And that’s how glamour came to mean mastery over the way you look.”
Below, five big New York Fashion Week trends from our Vogue Beauty forecast that are worth a closer look.
Hair That Moves
Just as we predicted for 2026 (and seen in the waterfall bangs Guido Palau attached to Jonathan Anderson’s Dior couture collection last month), hair artists captured every micro and macro movement on the runways. There were the woke-up-at-my-friend’s wisps Anthony Turner teased from scarves at 7 for All Mankind, the waist-length waves Diega Da Silva brushed out for Ulla Johnson, and the fuzzy flyaways Orlando Pita left floating for Michael Kors. Matt Benns washed more than half of Eckhaus Latta’s models’ hair in a basin with Tresemmé Amplified Volume shampoo—no conditioner—for “superclean” hair that’s “very airy,” he explained backstage. “So when it walks, it’s just moving.”
Goth Stars
Is beauty interpreting—and reinterpreting—our historical view of powerful women? Nail artist Sojin Oh’s XXL press-on nails gripped Kim Shui’s collection like those of a fashion vampire headed straight to the front row of Taymour’s Collina Strada runway. Widespread application of plummy blackberry pigments often arrived with gothic, femme fatale undertones: At Area, where Aburn made the link between glamorous women and witches, makeup artist Dick Page painted lips in balmy blackberry shades from Milk Makeup. The combination of eerie rubber gloves and makeup artist Emi Kaneko’s oxblood lip at Lii seemed to embody the spirit of the main character of the 2013 sci-fi thriller Under the Skin. LVMH Prize semifinalist Zane Li chatted with Vogue’s Laird Borrelli-Persson about the inspiration he pulled from scenes where the film’s main character, played by Scarlett Johansson, “tries to trap a man.”
Deconstructed Details
Imperfection and asymmetry continue to win in an AI-friendly era. At Collina Strada, hair artist Mustafa Yanaz piled on giant deconstructed wigs and extensions teased with Bumble Bumble texture mists. Dick Page left models’ skin at Michael Kors so un-glammed that visible undereye circles appeared truly angelic. For Proenza Schouler, makeup artist Thomas de Kluyver took “elements of a classic makeup look and deconstructed them,” he told Vogue’s Kiana Murden backstage of using Byredo lipsticks and liners to create asymmetrical lip and eye gestures that “slightly distort the face.” This fits with what Scott told Phelps of a feeling that Proenza exuded for her before being appointed as creative director: “There was this glass between you and this woman that you’d see, and she was impeccable. She was super perfect. And that idea of perfection is a little bit scary for me.”
Updo Overdrive
We saw updos begin their return to the runways last season, and this season the style was swept up to even more impressive heights. At Anna Sui, hairstylist Garren utilized his own R+Co BLEU products to create mini bouffants (that still stood several inches high!) to capture “the punk turned New Romantic wave at the Blitz nightclub in London” scene he gleaned from discussions with the designer. For Diotima, hairstylist Joey George created what he coined “the bedroom twist,” a highly lacquered double French twist (with a yet-to-launch Oribe product), as a play on Rachel Scott’s theme of eroticism. “Rachel really loves not only a sexy woman, but someone who is quite strong,” George told Murden backstage. “And strength is quite sexy, right?”
A Blue Attitude
Blue is a feeling these days; blue is a mood. On the first runway of NYFW, Thomas de Kluyver swept lids at Marc Jacobs with frosty blue shadow from lash to brow. Designer-darling nail artist Jin Soon Choi topped fingers and toes at Proenza Schouler with a hazy cerulean polish named Sea Clay from her eponymous line. At Eckhaus Latta, makeup artist Fara Homidi debuted an eye palette with a wash of sheer blue shadow that she buffed onto a few models’ lids in “a muddled sort of shape—it’s a sort of a careless blue eye,” she told me backstage. It’s a “wearable” way to try the hue, she says, and can indeed be smudged on with bare fingers, “which is really cool.”
Have a beauty or wellness trend you’re curious about? We want to know! Send Vogue’s senior beauty and wellness editor an email at beauty@vogue.com.
