Welcome To The Return Of Smudged Eyeliner

If you haven’t been able to stop thinking about the Gucci show, same. Between the slinky walks down the runway and the closing whale-tail gown worn by none other than Kate Moss, the message was clear: feralness is back in fashion — and along with it, club kid makeup and seriously smudged eyeliner.

Nostalgia for the ’90s is at an all-time high, and nowhere is this more evident than in the throwback trends cropping up in beauty. But the biggest thing to stick isn’t a single look — it’s the overall vibe shift away from clean girl perfectionism and toward the decade’s devil-may-care attitude. “There was a beautiful amateurishness to it,” Terry Barber, global director of makeup artistry for MAC Cosmetics, recently told Bustle. “It looked raw and unfiltered, and that’s why it looked so cool.”

That energy showed up most clearly in the eyes at Gucci. Thick, blown-out, and intentionally messy, the smudged eyeliner looked like someone who never quite got around to washing their makeup off after a night out — and it signals the very loud return of eyeliner as the main character. Ahead, everything to know about the grungy trend that’s already landing from Milan Fashion Week straight to TikTok.

Grungy Smudged Eyeliner Is Back

Once upon a time, the worst thing in the world was getting black mascara under your eyes — but the makeup at Gucci flips that idea on its head. Instead of a precise wing, charcoal shadow circles the entire perimeter, even dipping into the under-eye bags. On the lids, true black pigment gets packed on and curved upward into a quasi-cat-eye shape. Add a coal-colored waterline, and the whole look leans fully into the messiness.

Of course, Gucci isn’t the first to come up with panda eyes. Party girl history 101: Paris Hilton at her 21st birthday in 2002, pairing a chainmail dress with sooty eyes and a frosted lip. Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss perfected the look throughout the ’90s, usually with a cigarette somewhere in the frame. More recently, Julia Fox revived it on a red carpet in 2022, delivering the now-iconic clip, “I actually did it myself, yeah.”

What makes it feel primed for a comeback is that statement eyes are having a moment again. (Hello, 2016.) After a few years where beauty seemed laser-focused on glass skin and lip oil, attention is drifting back north with colorful eyeshadow and graphic liner. In that context, panda eyes feel like the logical next step: if eye makeup is returning, it might as well go big.

How To Try The Look

No surprise here — panda eyes are easy to achieve, even if you’re not an eyeshadow savant. On TikTok, some people are literally smudging black powder shadow all over their lids with their fingers and then cleaning up the edges with a makeup wipe. Others start with a thick kohl wing and blur it out until the shape dissolves into a smoky haze. Either way, precision isn’t the point.

If you do want a slightly more controlled version, start with a taupe shadow all over the lid. It acts as a base for the darker shades to blend into and helps keep the black from turning flat or gray. Layer on deep brown and charcoal transition shadows all around the eye, then pack a true black onto the outer corners and near the lashes like a smoky tightline. Optional: Add an ivory shadow to the brow bone to make the rest of the sootiness pop. Finally, take a creamy eyeliner and run it along the upper and lower lashes before smudging it out.

If you’re feeling like a Gucci girl, finish the look with a few faux freckles and a greige-y brown lipliner. The end result should look like you didn’t try too hard — which, ideally, you didn’t.