The season’s hottest beauty trend is looking cold — right down to the chapped lips.
“[It’s] the new aesthetic,” Sophia Ciabattoni, 19, told The Post.
But rather than waiting hours for frigid temperatures to transform her soft pout into a parched pucker, Ciabattoni, a finance major at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, uses makeup.
She first covers her lips in a matte foundation, dabs them with setting powder and lathers them in a layer of nude concealer to mask their natural rosiness. The brunette then places a dash of red lip tint only at the center of her mouth which she blends in with her finger in order to create the winter-withered look.
“It’s all about taking something that’s not that attractive and making it beautiful,” she said.
“Cold Girl Makeup” is trending with Gen Zers and young millennials. On TikTok, #ColdGirlMakeup has over 52.5 million views with posts extolling the beauty of matte foundation, rosy cheeks and noses and lips that appear kissed by wind and frost.
Zoe Kim Kenealy, 26, claims to have invented the trend after seeing A-Listers like Emily Ratajkowski and Kylie Jenner looking icy hot.
“I was on Pinterest and I started coming across all these video of these girls in the snow looking flush with the pink cheeks, and I thought, ‘this is so cute,’ said Kenealy, who’s also responsible for popularizing the “#CryingMakeup” phenomenon that sparked on TikTok earlier this fall.
For Jessica Zhang, a 20-year-old business school student at Cornell University, the trend has a nostalgic appeal.
“When I do cold girl makeup, it takes me back to [my siblings and me] having rosy cheeks, a little bit of snowflakes on our eyelashes and chapped lips,” Zhang told The Post.
Her three-step how-to video on accomplishing the “snow princess” look has fetched 3.9 million views on TikTok.
“It’s not very complicated,” said Zhang. “First, it’s adding a cool-tone blush under your eyes, the tip of your nose, your chin and all over your lips.” She uses Makeup by Mario’s Soft Pop Powder Blush in “poppy pink” with a matte finish ($24).
“Then I add a little matte pink lipstick to the inside of lips, and at the top and bottom [indents] of my lips and blend it out with my finger for contour,” continued Zhang, who gets the job done with her trusty Generation G blotted lipstick by Glossier in “crush” — a hot raspberry hue ($18).
Finally, she places “blossom glow” MegaGlo highlighting powder from Wet n Wild ($6.49) at the inner corners and underlining of her eyes and at the top of her nose. She also adds a swipe of 3CE Eye Switch glitter ($14.50) as eyeliner to imitate the shimmer of fresh snowflakes on her face.
“Anybody can do it,” said Zhang, an Asian American. “This looks good on everyone.”
Suraqa Noor, a Toronto skincare influencer of Bengali descent, agrees. She’s gotten over over 692,000 TikTok views with an instructional video showing that looking cold isn’t just for pale white women.
To brighten her face she uses Dior Forever skin concealer ($38) near her eyes, and on her cheeks and nose. And to reduce shine she pats her skin with Huda Beauty’s easy-bake setting powder ($35). Then she uses Merit Beauty’s Flush Balm cheek tint in color “cheeky” ($28) to falsify a wind-chilled mug.
“It is a little harder to show the ‘cold’ look on darker skin,” she said. “But it is universally doable and beautiful.”