How The Spice Girls's Beauty Looks Perfectly Sum Up The '90s
Oh the '90s. A time of brown lipliner - MAC's aptly-named Lip Pencil in Spice, of course - ultra-straightened hair, blue mascara and glitter eyeshadow. And no group of women summed up the decade's beauty mood better than the Spice Girls. With the opening of the new SpiceUp exhibition in London on July 28 - not to mention the spring/summer 2018 revival of key '90s beauty trends on the catwalk - we take a look back at some of the Spice Girls's most memorable hair and make-up moments and how they shaped the face of pre-2000 beauty.
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There's a reason Emma Bunton got the nickname Baby. That sweet smile, her smattering of freckles and those big blue eyes made fresh-faced beauty feel modern and appealing in those mid '90s days when we normally wouldn't dream of leaving the house without layers of frosted lipstick, blue hair mascara and a wash of blue eyeshadow.
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Oh the Pob. The style we all coveted so much we straightened our hair until it snapped off. Paired with brown lipstick lined with too-dark liner and brows plucked into quizzical arches, it's what '90s beauty dreams were made of.
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Have you ever cried after a hair appointment upon realising your highlights looked stripy and fake? Not a problem for Geri Halliwell circa 1997, who fully embraced a vibrant combination of tomato-red, ginger and white-blonde highlights complement by a glorious Rachel-from-Friends layered cut.
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One of the best thing about the Spice Girls was that they promoted individuality, and Mel C's Sporty Spice persona was key in helping young girls to realise that they didn't have to conform to ultra-feminine stereotypes of beauty to be a woman. All epitomised perfectly in that kick-ass high ponytail.
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Mel B's embracing of her natural curls meant that young women of colour could look to their favourite pop group and see a woman who represented what they looked like, too. Looking back, it was groundbreaking.
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If you went through the '90s without rocking a pair of Baby Spice pigtails, were you even there? Any blonde in school was immediately cast as Baby when everyone would gather to recreate the "Who Do You Think You Are?" dance in the playground, and these pigtails were the ultimate defining feature.
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As the years have gone on, Posh has continued to surprise and delight us with her myriad hairstyles, and her choppy crop is among the finest. Not complete without those two gelled strands at the front, of course.
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Any of us who started plucking our brows in the early '90s, using Geri here as our guide, will be drawing them on until we die. The skinner the better, we misguidedly thought at the time, and filled in with a brow pencil in a colour entirely different from our own.
