The Clean Girl Era is over – welcome to the Messy Girl Trend. The clean girl aesthetic had us slicking our hair into oblivion, buying lip oils that promised “your lips but better,” and pretending beige was a personality trait. For a while, it worked. We wanted to be that girl - polished, minimal, effortlessly glowing. But 2025? We’re bored. The internet has officially clocked out of the clean girl shift and clocked into something louder, smudgier, and a lot more fun: the messy girl trend.
What Was the Clean Girl Aesthetic?
The clean girl look was about control. Think glazed-donut skin, precise middle parts, and no-makeup makeup tutorials that somehow required ten products. It screamed discipline: morning matcha, hot yoga, and a skincare shelf that looked like an art installation. Aspirational? Yes. Relatable? Not really — especially for those who pushed the aesthetic onto themselves.
Enter: The Messy Girl Era
The messy girl doesn’t care if her bun is falling out. She’ll call it “texture.” Her eyeliner isn’t sharp; it’s slept in. Her lip liner bleeds into her latte foam and she’s fine with it. The vibe is undone, chaotic, and finally human.
Think Parisian off-duty model energy: simple white shirt, low-rise jeans, dark smudged eyes, brown lip liner, and maybe a pop of red at times.
Messy girl beauty staples:
- Smudged eyeliner that looks like you lived a little.
- Claw clips and flyaways instead of cemented slick-backs.
- Overlined lips with darker tones, perfectly imperfect.
- Bedhead hair that says, “I didn’t try,” and actually means it.
Why Are We Craving Messy?
Perfection Fatigue
We’re tired of looking flawless. After years of glass-skin tutorials and “5 a.m. routines,” audiences are done with the pressure. The messy girl trend feels like a breath of fresh air: eyeliner that smudges when you laugh too hard, lip liner that doesn’t need constant reapplication, and hair that doesn’t collapse if one strand escapes. The standards are not lower, they are looser.
Gen Z’s Demand for Realness
Gen Z has mastered the art of sniffing out fake. If Instagram required hyper-filtered feeds, then their platforms of choice — TikTok and BeReal — reward authenticity over polish. The messy girl look mirrors that cultural shift: a beauty trend that embraces flaws, quirks, and personality. It says, “I’m human, not a Facetune template.” And that’s exactly the kind of relatability Gen Z wants to see.
Runway Energy and Fashion’s Influence
Fashion has always dictated beauty’s next move, and this time it’s no different. On recent runways, brands like Acne Studios, Diesel, and Miu Miu leaned into undone textures, grunge-inspired makeup, and hair that looked more “rolled out of bed” than “fresh from the salon.” Beauty follows fashion’s lead, and the messy girl aesthetic is already filtering from high-fashion editorials into everyday tutorials.
Post-Pandemic Rebellion
The clean girl aesthetic mirrored a world obsessed with control: sanitized, contained, and safe. But after years of masks, lockdowns, and rules, beauty is swinging in the opposite direction. The messy girl era is rebellion wrapped in mascara clumps and coffee-stained lipstick. It’s the beauty equivalent of saying, “I survived all that, and now I’m going to live — loudly, imperfectly, and unapologetically.”
