How to Achieve a Groovy
‘70's Makeup Look

By Jeanette Crutchfield

Each decade has it’s defining beauty trends —The 2000s had the skinny brows, super glossy lips, and shimmer everything. The ‘90s had their matte complexions, tight-lined eyes, and brick red lips. The ‘80s had rocker eye makeup, bold fuchsia blush and bushy brows. Now it’s time for the ‘70s to shine. Read on to get some inspiration from the “flower child” decade.

Face

The beginning of the ‘70s was all about the “flower power” hippie movement where the focus was on a natural, barely there, almost invisible complexion. The look was anchored by sheer, hardly noticeable foundation in super soft natural textures. Not too dewy, not too matte. The perfect velvety soft texture.

The idea was to disguise any signs of texture on the skin to get a poreless looking finish. This is a trend we can easily take into today as the focus on skin looking natural and healthy is one that’s always in style.

To achieve skin that’s touchably soft, try our soft velvet face primer. Then apply your favorite foundation to achieve your own natural, no makeup-makeup look.

Eyes

For eye makeup, the hippies of the 70s took “flower power” literally and used colors they would find in nature to accent their eyes. Think gorgeous matte earth tones symbolizing the ground where flowers grow. Lush greens like the leaves, bright blue eyeshadow like the sky, and shimmery eyeshadow in the golden yellows of the sun. The idea was to make your eyes as colorful as possible, which sometimes included drawing actual flowers around your eyes and on your face.

Have fun and be creative when using eyeshadow shades. For a colorful and easy way to achieve a ‘70s eye makeup look, try putting a matte nude-brown eyeshadow all over your eye, a shimmery golden yellow on the inner corner of your eye, bright blue eyeshadow in your crease, and smudge a forest green eyeshadow under your lower lashes. There really are no limits, so play around with the colors and have some fun.

Just be careful to not blend the eyeshadow too much. You want each color to softly fade into the next, but if you blend too much, your eyeshadow will turn “muddy” (where all the colors blend together and you get one single color on your eyes reminiscent of mud).

For all the retro shades you could possibly need to recreate this look and more, try the Good Vibes Only Eyeshadow Palettes. Our eyeshadow brush set gives you all the brushes you need to create your perfect groovy 70s-inspired eyeshadow look.

Lips

Lips of the groovy ‘70s were sheer and barely there, but they had a lot of sheen to them. The emphasis of the era was always on the eye makeup, so lips stayed more subdued. That doesn’t mean they were completely ignored though. Lip balms were all the rage in the time of flower power. People kept lip balms everywhere and used them constantly to keep their lips looking sheen and hydrated all day long.

Our Good Vibes Only Shroom Moisturizing Lip Balm for the perfect amount of hydration and sheen on the lips. It’s infused with snow mushroom to help keep your pout plump and hydrated. You can also use it as a dewy highlighter to keep that fresh skin look going strong.

Peace, Love, and Happiness

The ‘70s were also about peace, love and happiness, and people weren’t afraid to showcase peace signs, hearts, and smiley faces all over their face and body. To make this trend current, try subtle hints of flower power by using nail art or nail stickers. Try the groovy nail stickers to instantly upgrade your nail look.

We always look to our past to get inspiration for our future and makeup is no exception. Try playing around with a groovy 70s look and see how “far out” you can take it!