‘Zoom face,’ TikTok hacks and DIY self-care: 2020’s biggest beauty trends

In a year that many of us spent indoors or hidden behind a mask, the way we think about beauty has changed more profoundly than, perhaps, at any other time in living memory.

The pandemic posed plenty of new and unexpected challenges for the image-conscious, from shuttered salons to the scourge of “maskne.” Yet it also spawned ingenious new solutions, whether it was DIY skincare or YouTube makeup tutorials during lockdown. And who would have thought hand sanitizer would become one of the year’s essentials?

Hardships experienced around the world have put into perspective the relative importance, or not, of worrying about how we look (though with lipstick sales down and searches for cosmetic surgery up, this may depend on which metric you’re looking at). But 2020 has also reminded us what beauty is really all about: having fun, feeling better about ourselves and, thanks to social media, connecting with one another in the process.

From buzzcuts to natural makeup, here are CNN Style’s most notable beauty trends from the year that was.