April is Coachella month, which means for two weekends every spring the entire US beauty internet collectively decides what festival makeup is going to look like for the rest of the year — and the rest of the year then dutifully copies it. April 2013 was no exception. The first weekend of Coachella ran April 12 through 14 that year, the second the following weekend, and the photo sets that came out of the desert defined the texture of US warm-weather makeup right through Labor Day. Below, what we kept reaching for in a month that felt one part festival prep, one part spring color reset, and one part Earth Day green-skincare conversation.
Glitter on the cheekbone, not the lid
The festival eye in 2013 was specific. It was not the smudgy black liner of 2009 Coachella, and it was not the full glitter lid that would dominate 2018. The 2013 version was a tiny dot of metallic — gold or silver, applied with a fingertip — placed at the inner corner of the eye and on the high points of the cheekbones, with everything else on the face kept clean and slightly dewy. NARS Multiple in Copacabana was the cheekbone product everyone we knew was layering for the look — a pearl-pink shimmer stick that read as light rather than makeup, and that did not go anywhere over six hours of hot dry desert lighting.
The drugstore copy of this came fast. By the second weekend of Coachella the shelves at Ulta were rearranged around tiny pots of loose glitter and shimmer cream sticks; by the end of the month the look had crossed into bridal showers and birthday-party makeup in cities that had nothing to do with festival culture. The trick was restraint. Two dots, never four.
The clean-beauty conversation got real
Earth Day fell on the 22nd of April, which it always does, but the green-beauty conversation that landed around it in 2013 was meaningfully different from the dutiful recycle-your-mascara-tubes coverage of earlier years. Tata Harper had been growing quietly out of a Vermont farm operation for a few years and had reached the point where Sephora was carrying her core line on the East Coast. The branding was good — minimalist green tubes, the founder’s name on the front, an explicit ingredient stance — and the prices were aspirational rather than punishing.
The other brand we kept hearing about was RMS Beauty, the makeup line founded by Rose-Marie Swift, whose Lip2Cheek pots were the gateway product for anyone who wanted to dip into clean makeup without committing to changing their whole routine. The packaging was tiny and a little awkward, the formulas were genuinely clean by the standards of the moment, and the texture was warm-fingertip-friendly in a way that felt right for a year that was getting more comfortable being a little less precious about its makeup.
Spring color collections finally got brave
The big spring color collections from the prestige houses landed early in the month, and 2013 was the first year in a few where the spring drops actually felt unmistakably spring rather than a continuation of fall with a few added pinks. Chanel’s spring collection was leaning into a softer pink-coral palette around the eyes and a sheer rosy lip; the Joues Contraste blush in Rose Initial was the shade we kept restocking. The styling in the campaign was unmistakable Karl Lagerfeld — a little arch, a little knowing, all set in soft natural light.
Drugstore caught up with prestige faster than usual that year, too. Maybelline’s Color Whisper line, the sheer-finish lipsticks that landed early spring, had become a conversation by mid-April — the texture was new, the price was right, and the corals translated the spring runway look at a fraction of the cost.
Setting spray became a category, not a step
Setting spray had been around for years as a theatrical-makeup product (Model in a Bottle, MAC Fix+) and it had been a pro-makeup-artist secret for years before that. But April 2013 was the month it became a real shelf at US retail. Urban Decay’s All Nighter was the breakout product. The promise was simple: a fine mist sprayed at the end of a routine that locked the makeup in for genuinely all-day wear in a way no powder finishing step had ever managed. The Coachella crowd loved it, and the Coachella photos cemented it as a category.
The professional-grade alternative for editors and makeup artists was M·A·C’s Fix+, which was technically a hydrating mist but doubled as a setting and a refresher and a brush wetter. Two products, one bathroom counter, and the conversation about makeup longevity in warm weather basically resolved.
Mascara that survived the pollen
April is allergy season for most of the US, and the mascara conversation gets loud every year because of it. The 2013 winners were not flashy launches — they were the workhorses, the formulas you reordered every six weeks. L’Oréal Paris’s Voluminous Lash Paradise had not launched yet (that was a 2017 product), but the previous-generation Voluminous in the original gold tube was the standard at every makeup counter we walked past. Benefit’s They’re Real was the prestige answer, twenty-four dollars and fully tubing, and it did not budge through pollen, hot subway commutes, or the occasional unprovoked spring tear. We kept both on the bathroom counter that month.
What we’re watching for May
May means wedding season starts in earnest, which means bridal-prep skincare conversations dominate every magazine and every comment section. We were watching the brightening-serum category, which had been quietly building since the start of the year, and were curious to see whether the vitamin-C conversation would finally pick up speed. We were also tracking texture sprays — the in-between of a styling product, a salt spray, and a dry shampoo that the LA hair stylists kept namechecking but the East Coast had not fully discovered yet. We will see you on the first Tuesday of May.