Hunter Schafer's Most Striking Beauty Looks

"Makeup really is painting at the end of the day," Hunter Schafer once told Glamour. And like any great artist, she experiments fearlessly. The actress made her name in Hollywood on "Euphoria," a show renowned for expressive makeup looks that worked as extensions of the emotion bleeding onto our screens. But in real life — when she's not acting or fighting for transgender inclusivity in fashion — Schafer's beauty choices are just as arresting.

As all makeup wearers know, its ritual is deeply personal. For Schafer, it's always been a meaningful part of her self-expression. Her earliest memory of it, as she confided in RUSSH, dates back to a tiny lip floss ring, plucked from a treasure box in kindergarten. With her curiosity whetted, she added: "I started experimenting with makeup in secret, borrowing my sister's products and trying things on to see what it was like. I would put it on in the bathroom at school, but take it off before my parents picked me up." By high school, she had shed the secrecy, seeing beauty as a way to reflect on the outside how she was truly feeling inside.

Now, when we see her on the red carpet or leading editorial campaigns, Schafer treats beauty with the same reverence. "I like the focus on accentuating and highlighting the beauty that's already there," she revealed to RUSSH, which is clear to see. She's served countless looks that harmonize beautifully with her ethereal essence — each one striking in its own right.

Horror film "Cuckoo" took Hunter Schafer to Berlin for its premiere at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. In dreamy disarray, she balanced her signature ethereal softness with an undone edge.

Her complexion was luminous, and the dewy minimalism let her bone structure speak for itself. A wash of diffused crimson swept across her eyelids and feathered outwards towards her temples. A whisper of warmth wafted over her cheeks, which emphasised her enviable cheekbones and merged effortlessly with the flush of bright color around her eyes. Her locks played into this same spirit of windswept elegance, with an updo hairstyle almost feral in its delicacy. Loosely gathered at the back, the strands escaped with willful abandon. A little wild, a little wistful: it was as if she had stepped out of a reverie and straight onto the red carpet.

During awards season, the Vanity Fair Oscars party is one of the hottest tickets in town. Beauty can be pushed to its most artful extremes, and in 2023, Hunter did exactly that. She opted for a style that exuded soft surrealism. In weightless waves, her hair was parted in a characteristically Gen-Z middle part and sunk into a relaxed texture. Her skin shone with a radiant, immaculate glow, and on her lips, she stripped it back with a soft pink. A serene sprinkling of  champagne eyeshadow accentuated the languid, dreamlike quality of her gaze.

Schafer had already set the bar high for Oscars party glamour, but in 2024, she met (and perhaps even surpassed) her own standard. At the annual Vanity Fair shindig, she once again let her natural beauty do the talking. Her glowing skin was left in its own raw clarity. Camera flashes caught the hollows of her cheeks and the sharp incline of her jaw in the most organic way, with her contour working to her advantage.

Her nose was delicately highlighted, and brows were brushed into feathery lifts. Her eyes needed little more than eyeliner and a flicker of mascara at the lashes. An unyielding red lip, lacquered and pristine, stood in gorgeous contrast to the near-translucent silkiness of her complexion.

Her look for the "Euphoria" season 2 photo call was delightfully offbeat: bold in its strangeness, but delicate in execution. Her makeup played with soft angularity, accentuating her chiseled bone structure whilst maintaining her ethereal lightness. A diffused rose-toned wing extended outward from the outer corner of her eyes, but instead of a harsh flick, the shape melted into her temples to create an otherworldly lift. As is her signature, her complexion was pristinely fresh, with a glass-like glow. With a barely-there pinkish nude, lips were kept neutral.

It was Hunter's hair that really saw the fantasy take flight. Cut into a sharply structured bob with microbangs (incidentally, an important player in 2025's bangs trends) it juxtaposed its own bluntness with two unexpected playful buns.

Schafer was announced as the global ambassador for Japanese beauty house Shiseido in 2020. Known for its fusion of tradition and innovation (unsurprising for a company founded in 1872), Shiseido approaches makeup and skincare as an enhancing art form. With a philosophy centered on effortless radiance, it seemed a natural fit for the "Euphoria" actress.

In this particular look, her skin's natural texture glowed with evident hydration. Eschewing any heavy pigment, her lips carried a tender, pink, petal-stained flush. We loved Hunter's hydro bob: a tousled, windswept do with choppy ends that gave it a subtle rebelliousness.

To the Costume Designers Guild Awards, Hunter Schafer set aside her usual ethereal minimalism, stepping into something darker and moodier. Known for her affinity for soft washes of color and barely-there bases, Schafer instead leaned into a world of shadow and smoke. Her eyes, typically a slate for gentle pigments, were framed in a storm of diffused charcoal. The smoky wing was heavier than her usual elongation. The sharp black tightlining was commanding. Her skin saw a soft-matte and sculpting style, whilst her lips were a muted velvety rose, anchoring the drama of the eyes without competing.