Across the autumn/winter ’26 runways, trends came thick and fast (our beauty desk is still obsessing over button-nose blush). Yet few delivered the instant beauty payoff of a great set of lashes. Otherworldly and oversized, doll-like or sketched on, this season the message was clear: make the most of your mascara and don’t shy away from a fun falsie
For the past few seasons, lashes have been in one of fashion’s familiar on-again, off-again relationships. After several seasons dominated by bare eyes, brown mascara and the sort of studied restraint that made any obvious lash look feel faintly gauche, autumn/winter 2026 suggests the tide has turned again. Not in one neat, uniform way, mind you. At some houses, that meant dense, doll-like fringe that pushed the eye into something vaguely retro. At others, lashes were used almost like punctuation: spiked or drawn own.
The common thread, however, was a sense of theatrical mischief. And, more specifically, two key makeup artists: Daniel Sällström and Michele Magnani. Sällström and Magnani kept returning to the eye, using lashes to push beauty looks into something darker, stranger, sweeter or simply more fun.
At McQueen, that theatricality came with a darkly romantic edge. Seán McGirr’s autumn/winter 2026 outing paired polished beauty with something slightly undone beneath it, and the lashes played neatly into that tension. The look, created by Sällström, was hauntingly ladylike with false lashes lining both top and bottom to create an uncanny sort of doll-like eye. Styled with sculpted curls, they lent the models a kind of eerie femininity, which is really where McQueen beauty is at its best: impeccable at first glance, then ever so slightly unnerving once you look closer.
McQueen autumn/winter '26. Photo: Malorie Shmyr
Avavav autumn/winter '26. Photo: Courtesy of Mac Cosmetics
Rick Owen's autumn/winter '26. Photo: Malorie Shmyr
At Swedish Avavav, lashes were treated with far less reverence. Beate Karlsson’s world rarely has time for anything overly precious, and the beauty followed suit. With makeup by Magnani, the eye was graphic and knowingly offbeat with the a playful retro effect: a little bratty, a little ironic and entirely unconcerned with conventional prettiness.
Then came Sällström's Rick Owens, where subtlety was, predictably, shown the door. Oversized, candy-coloured and almost feathery in effect, here the lashes and makeup turned the eye into something plush, alien and a touch absurd. Which, in Rick Owens terms, is a compliment.
At Vivetta, the lash story landed in a moodier, more cinematic register. Beauty (again by Magnani) drew on gothic-romantic framing that read whimsical without tipping into twee. The lashes were exaggerated, yes, but not in a syrupy bombshell way. Very ingénue, like the heroine in a 1960s psychological thriller who absolutely knows more than she’s letting on. In other words: very good.