Glowing skin will always be in—there’s a reason the glass-skin craze has stuck around so long. But now, cloud skin is popping off on TikTok and making us consider whether we ought to ease up on our highlighter.
Originally made popular a couple of years back by MAC makeup artist Dominic Skinner, cloud skin is experiencing renewed interest over on TikTok (where it’s picked up over 3. 4 million views) with users looking for a soft-matte alternative to sheeny complexions.
While glass skin, along with buttery skin and dolphin skin, for that matter, is all about an insane glow, cloud skin is more about a soft-focus, hazy, lit-from-within look. Think about the sun shining through a band of clouds, that’s what we’re going for here. (It’s also worth noting that this is different from the K-Beauty “cloudless skin” trend, which is more about perfecting your skin from the inside out. )
“Cloud skin is so different from the other trends that we’ve been seeing,” says celebrity makeup artist Jamie Greenberg. For one thing, it offers gorgeous dimension thanks to strategically mixing skincare and makeup to get an ethereal, cherubic glow, instead of a blinding, almost wet-looking gleam.
“You have to mix the textures of what you’re putting on your skin; think dewy, glowing, and matte,” says Greenberg. That’s what creates the trend’s soft-focus effect, giving a dreamy, hazy quality to your skin that’s so classic and pretty — like a Rococo painting. It’s also way more forgiving than a super-shiny base.
