THE CURATED EDITION.
Reportage / Venice
Softly framed eyes, skin that looks like skin and a sixties revival handled with a light touch: at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, make-up moved away from transformation and towards precision.
BEAUTY · VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
The first great red carpet after summer is always a forecast. This year, on the Lido, the forecast called for restraint.
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival has closed its curtains, but it left a clear map of where beauty is heading. Venice, the oldest film festival in the world, works every September as an aesthetic barometer for the season ahead. This time the message was quiet: eyes sculpted with subtlety, skin that looks healthy rather than corrected, and a deliberate retreat from excessive perfection.
Hiromi, global make-up artist for Armani Beauty, sums up the edition as “discreet, fresh and radiant beauty”. “The skin appears luminous and healthy, with a real focus on letting natural texture show through, rather than creating a heavy, overly corrected finish,” she says.
The shift follows a broader turn towards skin health and longevity, in which the aim is no longer perfection but the best possible version of each face. Hiromi points to soft definition, discreet sculpting of eyes and lips, and colour applied lightly. “The overall effect is very modern: elegant and polished, but still looking like the most beautiful version of yourself.”
One of the most recurrent looks on the Lido was a defined eye with nothing graphic about it. Hiromi explains the technique: black pencil, worked tight into the lash line, with a touch on the lower waterline to frame the gaze without a hard outline. The shape is gently elongated; the expression never hardens.
It usually comes with fresh, luminous skin, which keeps the whole from feeling heavy. “Combined with softly defined eyes and lips, it creates a beautiful balance, modern and discreet,” she says. Lush’s global make-up team adds a useful nuance: framing the eye delicately “isn’t about skipping shadow, it’s about the intention of where you place it.”
Several stars chose a more natural reading of red-carpet glamour, and Kendall Jenner illustrated it well. Her make-up stayed low-key: fresh skin, gently defined features, natural beauty left as the protagonist. Without dramatic colour or heavy contouring, the look felt considered and composed, sophisticated without excess. Here make-up enhanced rather than disguised, and the result read as personal.
The other strength of the edition was balance: skin, eyes and lips working together, none overpowering the others. For Hiromi, red-carpet beauty is moving towards reinforcing natural beauty rather than inventing a fantasy, so that make-up reads as part of the person, an extension of the clothes and the presence.
“When the beauty look, the person and the outfit complement each other instead of competing, everything comes together in the right atmosphere.”
Hiromi, global make-up artist, Armani Beauty
Radiance does the central work in that balance: skin with a glow keeps the make-up fresh and contemporary without losing polish. To reproduce the effect, Hiromi recommends preparing the skin well, applying a fine layer of mattifying primer only where shine tends to appear, then building the following layers gradually, letting each settle before the next. It preserves a natural look and extends wear through a long night.
A sixties-inflected aesthetic was also strongly present. Sydney Sweeney’s make-up played with subtle contrasts: fully defined lashes paired with an elongated, softly smudged liner that extended the eye, adding depth without weight. A pastel-pink lip brought a timeless note and kept the whole light.
Lush notes that the sixties revival keeps returning, always with a contemporary twist, whether in graphic liners with dots of colour or in monochrome palettes. For Hiromi, it reflects a larger move towards make-up that is studied and sculpted, using light and shadow to flatter individual features rather than apply a single formula. “With Sydney, the eyes were cleverly sculpted to work with her natural bone structure, creating depth and definition with great balance,” she says. “That personalised approach feels very current.”
Venice confirmed the turn towards individuality and personalisation. There was no single formula for glamour: make-up adapted to each face, its features and its own style.
The first red carpet after summer is always a forecast. This year it said that beauty is less about transformation, and more about precision with what is already there.
Details and further reading: 83rd Venice International Film Festival, La Biennale di Venezia · Armani Beauty · Lush.
Instagram: @labiennale and @armanibeauty.
GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER.
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