Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it’s absolutely necessary to cringe over those awful makeup and fashion choices we made back in the day. Whether it be questionable makeup tips we nabbed from Pinterest, or peculiar beauty hack compilation videos on Youtube in the early 2010’s, we hope we can look back on those trends and be thankful we’ve gained some sense over the past ten years. Don’t worry if you can relate to any of the following – we were all in it together!

1. Unblended Foundation

Experimenting with makeup at a young age is something many people venture into and it’s very exciting; it enables a feeling of maturity like never before. Foundation and tinted moisturiser were the products I first used starting out, and I’m pretty sure you can already guess what I’m going to say: incorrect colour matching. There was never a good in-between. More affordable foundations tended to be orangey toned (looking at you, Dream Matte Mousse), or deathly pale and chalky. And the worst part is, we probably didn’t even notice how tragic and wrong our colour matching was! Coupled with this tragedy, was our inability to skillfully blend the foundation into our necks and thus leaving behind a two-toned disaster or rather less affectionately coined ‘slag line’. Luckily, we have learned the error of our tween ways and now, we blend blend blend.

2. Concealer Lips

Scouting the perfect shade of lipstick for your skin tone is hard – how was 13-year-old me meant to know which colours complemented each other? Like many others, I had no idea, and consequently, the nation was left with a spread of unflattering concealer lips puckered all over. Having limited makeup supplies and quite frankly, not enough pocket money to splurge on multiple lip products meant that a trusty concealer killed two birds with one stone. It genuinely horrifies me to even consider doing such a thing now, but it’s funny to look back at old photos and think ‘Who allowed me to do that?!’ Thank goodness for the rise of brown/pink toned nude lipsticks before it got too dire!

3. Over Tweezed / Blocky eyebrows

This one makes me shudder – mainly because it hits too close to home. It always went further than just plucking a few stubborn strays – eyes watering and frustration mounting every single time. The reality is we should have left it to the professionals, and not pretend that we actually knew how to shape an eyebrow. As soon as they grew back, we’d do it again and again and it felt like it would never end. But alas – in came a solution! Thick, blocky and square edged eyebrows which were way too big and dark for your face, so close together it was a few centimetres away from a monobrow. It seems we found it hard to find a happy medium.

4. Hair Ombre and Hair Chalk

Although I was never allowed to dye my hair (Thank you Mum I’m very grateful now), my box ombre dip dye dreams were lived vicariously through others who were able to. Having the same hairstyle and colour for years seemed boring to many young teens at the time, so we took it upon ourselves to grab that box dye and run with that opportunity. The prospect of actually being a hairdresser for twenty minutes filled that childhood dream of having your own salon. It definitely made you stand out amongst the young teen crowd, with your new hair colour the talk of the day in school. The very adventurous would go for exciting vibrant colours – although this would prove difficult to get rid of once the excitement had worn off! All too often however, similar to the foundation line, the two colours failed miserably to blend together seamlessly, and one ends up with hair looking a bit like a Drumstick Squashie. A much less permanent alternative would be to buy some pastel hair chalk or glittery hairspray from Claire’s, resulting in a momentary feeling of freedom! It’s a good thing hair grows back pretty quickly.

Though I’ve only mentioned a few highlights, there are many other trends out there I’m sure we can all reminisce over and be thankful that we have moved past them. I am quite concerned, however, that we’re all partaking in trends we don’t realise are equally as cringeworthy in 2020. I guess we’ll have to wait 10 years to find out!

Other nostalgic trends…

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