Why Huda Kattan Is Over The Instagram Aesthetic

While some people were baking sourdough bread (or at least attempting to) and passing the time with puzzles during the pandemic, Huda Kattan was quietly working on the next venture for her wildly successful Huda Beauty empire: GloWish, a tightly curated collection of just two products (a skin tint and a bronzer), plus a brush for each.

The full lineup — the Multidew Skin Tint, Soft Radiance Bronzing Powder, Airbrush Finish Complexion Brush, and All Over Bronze Brush — may seem, well, a bit minimalist for Kattan. Since launching Huda Beauty in 2013 (her first product was a set of faux eyelashes beloved by Kim Kardashian West), the beauty entrepreneur has become synonymous with the ultra-highlighted, ultra-contoured Instagram look. “We’ve been very adamant about being the ‘cake face’ beauty [brand],” Kattan tells Bustle over Zoom. “That full-coverage, not-letting-anything-shine-through [look].”

It wasn’t until she launched Wishful — her skincare brand that dropped right before the pandemic — that she began pivoting to a more natural aesthetic. “If I’m being honest about the beauty industry, we’ve gotten to a point where it just never ends. You have to cover up your face, you need higher cheekbones, you have to add Photoshop and Facetune,” she says. “I [started] to feel a little bit like I was doing something wrong when I was [altering] my images. It felt like it was almost a little dirty — something didn’t feel right about it.” Kattan added that in 2019, she began visiting a doctor once a month to remove her fillers. “You don’t remove filler by just pulling it out; you burn it out. It’s so painful,” she says.

That moment of reflection is what inspired her to launch GloWish, which she describes as a marriage of skin care and makeup. (Quite literally — the name “GloWish” is a mashup between her regular makeup products, which all include the word “glow,” and the Wishful line.) For the campaign imagery, Kattan has done away with Photoshop, save for the occasional enhancement to the surrounding landscape.

She considers Multidew Skin Tint the star product. In 13 different shades that you can mix and match, the formula is designed for light but long-lasting coverage. “Our code name for it was ‘weekend skin,’” Kattan says. “[It’s the product] everyone wears on the weekend when they go to the beach or they don’t want to look like they’re wearing too much makeup.”

Available in five shades, the Soft Radiance Bronzing Powder is technically a powder, but feels like a cream. Don’t draw comparisons to Huda Beauty’s popular Tantour, though — this one’s much softer, with a marble swirl design for added luminosity and a more natural glow. Basically, that’s the entire idea.

The products also have an interesting secret ingredient: red bell peppers. Packed full of vitamins (especially vitamin C) and minerals, bell peppers — more specifically red bell peppers — contain antioxidant properties that fight off free radicals and help protect your skin from cell-damaging blue light. Kattan says she specifically used “ugly” versions of the nutritious veggie because unattractive produce often goes to waste instead of getting sold at supermarkets. “It’s mind-boggling because there’s such an issue with excess food that really hinders our sustainability. There’s so much excess food produced and not used.”

You can get your hands on Huda Beauty’s GloWish collection online at HudaBeauty.com, Sephora.com, and in Sephora stores starting June 1.

Studies:

T. Sun, Z. Xu, C-T Wu, M. Janes, W. Prinyawiwatkul, & H. K. No (2007). Antioxidant activities of different colored sweet bell peppers (Capsicum annuum L.). J Food Sci. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17995862/