I am very much a play-it-safe kind of girl when it comes to makeup. Never will you ever catch me in a colored mascara (brown is the limit of my experimentation), a red lip (scary), or blue eyeshadow. With that being said, you can imagine my complete and utter shock when I became the biggest fan of—wait for it—the purple blush trend. “It looks a little wild in the pan, but on the skin it reads way softer and more like a fresh, cool-toned flush,” celebrity makeup artist Lisa Aharon tells me. “Think of it as a brightening blush rather than purple; it wakes the face up in a really pretty way.”
It seems that we collectively just all got the memo that purple is the new pink, too. According to beauty and wellness marketplace Fresha, searches for purple makeup have surged 229 percent in the past month. Add that to the fact that the orchid-esque tone made its way onto multiple Fall/Winter 2026 runways (read: Carolina Herrera, Balenciaga, and Khaite), and it’s clear that this is about to be the it-color of the summer. “I think we’re craving something that feels a little different but still wearable. Purple blush is giving us that modern, almost editorial twist without being over the top,” adds Aharon.
