April 2014 ran on the same calendar everyone in US beauty had been watching since the year began — Coachella in the second and third weekends, the Easter weekend in between, the spring color collections finally getting their proper retail moment. The Coachella photo cycle that came out of the desert that month was distinctly different from the 2013 version. Where 2013 had been a quietly minimalist glitter-on-the-cheekbone moment, 2014 went louder — bigger braids, bolder lips, more visible product. By the first Tuesday of the month we already had three things on the bathroom counter that had not been there in March. Below, what we kept reaching for.
Coachella 2014 went louder than 2013
The festival makeup conversation pivoted hard in 2014. The 2013 desert-look had been minimalist — a tiny dot of metallic at the inner corner, dewy skin, almost nothing else. The 2014 version added back almost everything 2013 had stripped away. Bright lipstick read again, statement eyeliner came back, the braids got more elaborate, and the styling was more deliberately festival-coded. Urban Decay’s Electric Pressed Pigment Palette had launched in early 2014 and was the editorial reference for the saturated-color eye looks coming out of the desert — turquoise, magenta, lime, an actual bright orange.
The stick eyeliner conversation got louder too. M·A·C’s Chromaline gel paints, which had been the Halloween-makeup product of late 2013, found a second life as the festival liner of choice — applied with a small brush, dried fast, did not budge for ten hours of dry desert heat. By the second Coachella weekend we had three friends asking us where to find them.
Becca Beach Tint redefined the cheek-tint category
Becca’s Beach Tint, which had been a quiet category mainstay, kept widening its distribution through April 2014, and the brand’s growing presence at Sephora made it the spring cheek-tint conversation. The format — a creamy stain in a slim tube, applied with the fingertips on bare skin or layered over foundation — fit the warmer-weather makeup-bag minimalism the season was pushing. The shade everyone we knew was reaching for was Watermelon, a soft pink-coral that worked across most skin tones and pulled the cheek look into the same family as the spring lipstick conversation.
The drugstore answer continued to be Benefit’s Benetint and the newer Posietint, both of which had been around for years but were getting a renewed push at every endcap that spring. The category was solidly part of the bathroom-counter rotation by the end of April.
Pastel nails took over the spring conversation
The deep-burgundy nail era we had been documenting since fall 2013 finally cracked in April 2014. The shade conversation pivoted hard toward pastels — a milky lilac, a soft mint, a chalky butter yellow that nobody had been wearing in years. Essie’s Mint Candy Apple, which had been a quiet workhorse since its launch a few years earlier, was suddenly the most-requested pedicure shade at every salon we walked past. OPI’s Mod About You, the milky sheer lavender, was the hand-conversation piece that bounced through every spring how-to.
The format conversation pivoted with the shade. The deep-burgundy era had been about glossy, opaque, two-coats-and-done. The April 2014 pastel moment leaned into the sheer, milky, three-coats-for-full-coverage finish — and accepted that the visible brushstroke was part of the look rather than a flaw to disguise.
Easter weekend kicked off the brunch-makeup season
The Easter weekend of April 19 to 20, 2014 was the unofficial start of brunch-makeup season — a particular subset of warm-weather lifestyle that needed to look polished in natural daylight rather than evening lighting. The look that consistently held up across our group was a clean luminous skin (the Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer kept its position at the top of the category), a soft peach blush tucked higher on the cheekbone than the apple, a single coat of Benefit’s They’re Real or Maybelline’s Lash Sensational on the lashes, and a sheer-finish coral lipstick — never a true matte, never a deep red.
The brunch-makeup look would carry forward through Mother’s Day in May and into the summer wedding-season conversation. April was the month it solidified.
Hair-mask routines crossed into the everyday conversation
The once-a-week deep-conditioner-or-hair-mask routine had been a specialty for years; April 2014 was when it crossed into the everyday hair conversation. The drugstore tier had finally caught up to the prestige-shelf options. L’Oréal Paris’s Total Repair Damage-Erasing Balm, used as a leave-in mask once a week, was the editor reference for the under-fifteen-dollar version. Kérastase’s Masquintense kept the prestige slot.
What was new in April 2014 was the technique advice. The previous orthodoxy had been to apply the mask on dry hair before showering, leave for thirty minutes, then rinse. The 2014 advice flipped it — apply on damp towel-dried hair after the shower, leave overnight on a silk pillowcase, rinse out at the next wash. The results were better and the bathtub mess was gone. Half our friend group adopted the routine before the end of the month.
What we’re watching for May
May 2014 brings wedding season at full tilt, the Met Gala on the first Monday of the month (theme: Charles James: Beyond Fashion), and the Mother’s Day gifting cycle. We were watching the cushion-compact conversation that had been one rumor away from a US prestige launch since January and still had not actually delivered. We were also tracking the lengthening-mascara wars, which had quietly resolved around Maybelline’s Lash Sensational at the drugstore but were getting more competitive at the prestige tier. We will see you on the first Tuesday of May.