One afternoon, around three o’clock, I was heading out of the office on a work errand. Maybe it was the in-between hour, but there weren’t many people on the street, and I felt as though I’d been left there on my own. Just then, a passage from Kim Chun-soo’s Flower came to mind.

Before I called her name,
she was nothing
more than a gesture.

When I called her name,
she came to me
and became a flower.
— from Flower by Kim Chun-soo

When I thought about it, it rang true. I’m no exception. It’s when my family and friends recognize me that I finally feel I mean something to someone. On a street where no one calls me by name, I’m just one more person passing by.

Perhaps cosmetics are no different. No matter how good a product is at launch, if no one uses it or recognizes its true worth, it may remain just another manufactured item. It becomes ‘beauty’ only when someone discovers it, uses it, and expresses it in their own way.

Makeup is the same. Whether it’s a look we’ve put real care into or one we’ve finished in a rush, each day we express and look after ourselves a little. I suspect these individual expressions have built up into the movement we now call K-Beauty.

And now the world has begun to notice that movement. My first thought when I saw this season’s collections was, ‘These look so much like Seoul Beauty.’ Perhaps that’s why, of all the runway makeup I’ve looked at over the past few years, this season’s struck me personally as the prettiest. The crisp, refreshing colors and soft textures especially caught my eye. I was also impressed by how much calmer and more natural the makeup had become. The skin was neither overly translucent nor completely matte. Rather than filling the face with vivid color, the looks brought out the skin and features as they are. When color was called for, they put the emphasis on a single spot, such as a red lip. Overall, both the color and the thickness of the skin finish felt much lighter.

You could put this down to the freshness particular to S/S. But I’ve followed the S/S collections through four years of writing trend columns, and that light, fresh spring-and-summer mood has come back every season. What made this season feel a little different is that the whole approach to the face, from skin to eyes, cheeks, and lips, seems to have shifted toward something noticeably more pared-back. To me, it looked quite familiar. Not a bare face, but one that’s meticulously made up and never overstated.

I find myself wondering whether the standard of beauty the world looks to today is gradually drawing closer to the K-Beauty aesthetic we’ve long known.

This collection can be summed up in four keywords.

Now let’s look, one at a time, at the moments in the 27 S/S collections that resemble the Korean aesthetic we’ve grown so familiar with.

1. Pink Veil Skin

In the delicate mood of spring and summer makeup, baby pink has appeared without fail every season. This season, though, it was a little different. It came through not as a visible color, such as eyeshadow or lipstick, but as a pink that seemed to have softly seeped into the skin itself. The same was true of the skin finish. The focus shifted from skin smoothed into perfection to healthy skin that lets its natural texture show. What people keep reaching for isn’t skin with every blemish meticulously concealed, but a subtle radiance that makes your skin look simply good to begin with: the so-called wearable glassy finish.

At Dior, I was especially struck by a skin finish that seemed to flow seamlessly from the glossy hair. In other collections as well, what consistently caught my eye wasn’t radiance that leaves the whole face slick, but a finish that lets light softly show through a velvety veil only where it’s needed. Maybe that’s why the makeup mood feels more luxurious.

When all is said and done, the ideal skin finish is never too oily and never lifts from dehydration beneath the surface. However, glow skin doesn’t mean everyone wants the same radiance. As glowing skin has settled in as a major trend, ‘how it glows’ has come to matter more than ‘how much it glows.’ Each of us chooses from a range of glow products based on our own skin condition and the finish we want.

Our own glow cushions share a natural radiance that never looks artificial, but each differs slightly in feel and finish. Of these, I’ve picked three products, each creating a slightly different kind of glow skin.

① HERA Reflection Skin Glow Cushion Foundation is my recommendation for ‘anyone who wants their skin to look naturally good.’ It has a clear, natural radiance, and above all, the color is just so pretty. Your skin won’t look dull even as the hours go by, and with that clear radiance rising from within, at least one person is bound to ask which product you used.

② AP BEAUTY Prime Reserve Retrinity Mesh Foundation is for anyone who wants their unpampered skin to look sleek and firm, as if it’s been getting regular spa massages. Its concentrated, creamy texture passes through a mesh net to go on thin and fine. It also gives glossy coverage to areas where lost elasticity tends to cast shadows, for a noticeably plumper skin finish.

③ HOLITUAL Enriched Radiance Cushion is the one I’d recommend for dry skin that also needs some coverage for concerns such as pigmentation and blemishes. This cushion delivers moisture and coverage together. It’s a good pick if you love a natural glow but want a single product to address some of your skin concerns.

Also, no matter how good a glow makeup product you use, what matters most in the end is your skin’s natural condition. I recently tried an amazing new product, and I really want to recommend it. It’s HERA Intensive Firming Repair Balm. If you don’t use much skincare, I’d suggest using it as an intensive night treatment. Its rich cream-balm texture acts as a moisture shield overnight, so you’ll feel your skin get bouncy and firm right after washing your face.

In keeping with this trend, I asked ChatGPT, ‘Make an image of Seoul Beauty the way you see it,’ and this is what it came back with. The cushion case was an older model and the lip case wasn’t rendered quite right, but it seemed to recreate Seoul Beauty perfectly in mood and skin finish. It was satisfying to see that what we’re aiming for seems to be catching on just as intended.

As with the models’ makeup above, this season’s trend is a skin finish that starts with skincare to bring the skin to its best condition, then adds only as much radiance as you need on top.

[FAQ: Getting Cushion Foundation Right]

Q. They say the tool matters as much as the formula. How often should I replace my puff?
A. It’s best to replace your cushion puff once a month. Each cushion comes with one puff, and spare puffs are sold separately as a set of two, so I’d recommend replacing yours on that schedule.

Q. What’s the best way to apply a cushion?
① Don’t press hard into the cushion. With three fingers slipped into the puff, pick up the product using only as much pressure as comes naturally.
② Lightly tap the product on the puff against the cushion compact to adjust the amount.
③ Start with the cheeks, where blemishes, pigmentation, redness, and the like need covering, then pat and spread outward toward the edges of the face. Blend whatever’s left naturally over the rest of the face. One pickup should cover about half the face.
④ For areas that need extra coverage, load product onto only about half the puff and layer once more.

2. Eye Color Play

Eyeshadow colors that are relatively unfamiliar in Korea stood out.

You may be thinking, ‘What does this have to do with K-Beauty?’ But look closely, and the answer lies not in the colors themselves, but in how they were rendered.

Spring and summer are the seasons when flowers bloom, so colorful, vivid shades often appear in the collections too. However, this season even highly saturated colors weren’t packed on for full, vivid payoff. Instead, they were rendered far more lightly, in sheer, chiffon-like textures that let light and skin show through and in pastel tones that look blended with white.

Another standout was the way makeup and clothing colors were naturally linked. What we used to call ‘tone-on-tone’ or ‘matchy-matchy’ has returned in a far more refined, sophisticated form. Rather than transferring a garment’s color straight to the eyes, the looks varied the intensity and texture of the same color to create a natural connection between face and fashion.

Sky blue that conjures a crisp summer sky, a lilac-like pink violet, and marigold, which builds warm depth somewhere between yellow and orange. The colors themselves are bold, but layered on sheer, they never feel heavy.

What’s interesting is that this ‘pared-back styling’ has come to represent the Seoul Beauty look and is establishing itself as a leading color trend in the global market.

Recently in Japan, ‘morumoru’ (もるもる) makeup (also known as ‘meolmeol’ makeup) has emerged as a trend keyword, and many videos reinterpreting Korea’s calm, soft makeup have gone viral.

A single image of ‘this is what Korean makeup feels like’ has taken shape, not just in color but in mood as well.

Watching this trend, I naturally thought of ETUDE My Petite Palette.

Rather than filling the eye area with strong color and deep shading, it’s a palette made for building a mood by softly layering colors within a narrow range. With shadows and blushes arranged in two tiers, it gives you more range from a single palette. Its color lineup adds more natural depth than you’d expect, and if you want a little more color, you can boost the saturation with the cheek shades.

If I had to sum up this season’s color makeup in one line, it would be ‘clear in color, sheer in finish.’ Remember that.

[How-To] with ETUDE Nymph Dewy Jelly Prep/My Petite Palette & espoir Fake Shadow Contour Stick

① ETUDE Nymph Dewy Jelly Prep is a makeup base for the whole face, but applied to the eye area, it works like an eye prep and helps shadow adhere better.
② Rather than using a single eyeshadow color, mix shades to build layered color so it goes on subtly. First, lay the base color over the eyelid and under the eye.
③ Mix the base color you just applied with the medium-saturation shade you’ll use next. In other words, layer shade 1, then shades 1 + 2, then shade 2 to bring out a chiffon-like feel.
④ To create the shadow beneath the aegyo-sal (the soft fold just under the lower lash line), take the butter-smooth espoir Fake Shadow Contour Stick on a concealer brush and add natural shading for bright, wide-awake eyes.

3. Classic Red Lips

How many people can say with confidence that a red lip suits them? Red is the most classic lip color, but once it’s on the face, it isn’t easy to pull off comfortably. This season’s collections matched that red to the clothes to balance the overall saturation. From tomato red to dark cherry red, a broad spectrum of reds added a vivid accent to each look.

In fact, when I train our staff, I often hear, ‘It’s hard to recommend lip colors to customers.’ That’s because the same lip product’s final color payoff looks different depending on the wearer’s natural lip color and condition. They say that, unsure which one to suggest, they sometimes just recommend a bestseller.

If you’re looking for an on-trend color, HERA Sensual Tinted Shine Stick could be one option. Its vivid color and moist shine bring out your lips’ natural tone while giving you a fresh, lively look.

If a textbook red lip feels like too much, skip the perfectly filled-in lip and wear it lightly so it blends with the skin’s translucent radiance. Depending on how pared-back you keep it, even a vivid color can easily become an everyday ‘do-it-all item.’

[How-To] with HERA Sensual Tinted Shine Stick

① Sweep it once horizontally across the inner part of your lower lip for vivid color, then apply plenty of color to the inner part of your upper lip as well.
② Next, with a light touch, gently dab the color outward to connect it to the outer lip. As the vivid color at the center blends naturally into the outer edges, the line softens, and the moist texture comes alive for fuller-looking lips.

4. Hair Down or Tied Up?

This is somewhat ambiguous styling, neither tied up nor down. Anyone who’s had long hair knows how uncomfortable hair tied halfway like that can be. Yet this season’s collections turned that very ambiguity into its appeal. What stood out was hair styled to keep its natural tousle and even its frizzy texture.

Even this effortless styling comes with one important condition. It’s full, voluminous hair. Might hair density be an even bigger concern than sleek hair? However carelessly you tie it and muss it up, for it to read as ‘styling,’ healthy, full hair has to be the foundation.

Scalp concerns come in every season. That’s why, just as we care for the skin on our faces, we need to care for our scalp and hair consistently as well. I think styling starts with creating a clean scalp environment and healthy hair condition. If your scalp and hair are on your mind but it’s hard to set aside time for care, try AYUNCHE Rebalancing Scalp Serum after shampooing. A quick spray delivers a refreshing, cooling sensation, so you can care for your scalp without hassle.