Beauty stickers—like our favorite patches to simultaneously treat and adorn our acne—were reborn in the eyes of Marc Jacobs last night at his spring 2025 show. (While Fashion Week typically shows for the upcoming season, Jacobs broke with the traditional Fashion Week format and presented a see-it-buy-it style show this year.)
“The collection is a play on dimension, shape, and form,” says makeup doyenne Dame Pat McGrath, who created the look. “We are playing with two-dimensional shapes on each of the models' faces.” She gestures to the table next to her, where plates of the spots and dots of pretty velvet in shades of burgundy, fuchsia, red, and pink sit at attention waiting to be applied. “This is an abstraction of beauty.”
Each model has the dots custom-applied depending on their outfit and face—and with that, one can imagine the reference. My imagination conjures small black spots near the lip à la Marilyn Monroe (who Jacobs has referenced in past shows as well) or below the eye like Sophia Loren; the largest circles of red on the cheeks recall the beauty tradition of Korean brides or the signature look of Vogue contributor Lynn Yaeger, who attended the show. “Anywhere you see a spot, it's representative of beauty. Maybe it's blushing cheeks or a kiss on the lips,” McGrath adds.
The hair, on the other hand, is anything but flat. Hairstylist Duffy (who famously had to hunt down hundreds of wigs for a past Jacobs show in less than 48 hours) is cool and collected backstage while he brushes out a model's curls. “The texture is quite historical and romantic,” he tells me. To create the tight coils, he opened an ultra-slim curling iron with a clamp and wove sections of hair between the two like a figure eight. “It's meant to look like a disrupted curl, not a ringlet.” From there, each model's hair is piled atop their head in a style evocative of the 1800s. “It's not meant to look perfect or uniform in any way. The perfection comes from the imperfection.”
“We're all playing with dimension here,” McGrath adds. “It's a fun interplay.”
