A New Look for a New World

Sarah Weingartz, 18, became a makeup expert during her senior year of high school. Her days were spent in Zoom classes and at a part-time job at McDonald’s, and her nights on FaceTime, where she would connect with two classmates, usually around midnight, put on a bunch of eye shadow and lipstick, wipe it off and then go to sleep.

During the thick of quarantine, Ms. Weingartz, who never wore makeup prepandemic, stocked up on vibrant pencils, powders and palettes. She studied cat-eye techniques from Kall Me Kris, a.k.a. Kris Collins, a Canadian TikToker with more than 40 million followers, and experimented with blue shadow and eyeliner, now staples in her growing makeup collection.

“I started with a basic wing and got more and more fancy as it went on,” Ms. Weingartz said of her eyeliner journey. “It snowballed from there.”

Now she draws an exaggerated wing that “swoops up” and extends beyond the outer corner of her eye and uses white liner on her waterline to make her eyes “pop.” When she feels like it, she smudges on some red or blue eye shadow.

This is what the new way to wear makeup is all about.

After years of romanticizing “no-makeup makeup,” a catchall for the products to give the illusion of a “bare” (yet perfect) face, people are opting for self-expression as they weigh their appearance in a largely post-lockdown world. Many are back to socializing, eating out, vacationing, going to the office, events and, soon, holiday parties, and they’re hungry for ways to express their individuality.

The pandemic is one of few experiences that affected people all at once at a global scale. Those who were trapped at home, reduced to three inches of real estate on video calls, are now looking to identify or showcase themselves as special or unique. Makeup is one of the most approachable, affordable ways to do that, and it gives the opportunity, at its purest form, to be an artist with a blank canvas and a paintbrush.