Why is everything today more orange? That’s been the question on many make-up artists’ and devotees’ minds as the 90s beauty revival continues and the search for the perfect cool-toned nude becomes ever more frantic. We’re in the middle of a mass make-up shade revival nostalgia fest. All day, every day, make-up artists and content creators are mourning the loss of shades past – so much so that brands like MAC Cosmetics and Urban Decay have started bringing back old products from the grave. Nars just re-introduced its re-formulated version of The Multiple, which was discontinued, and brought back its original 90s lipstick range. Lancôme is attempting a Juicy Tube comeback through highly curated ads featuring mid-2000s icons like Gossip Girl’s Chuck Bass. But somehow still, nothing looks the same as it once did.

But why are we so obsessed with old shades, particularly those from the 90s? Perhaps it has everything to do with the fact that we want what we can’t have. Much of the criticism related to shade revamps is that hues today skew a little bit more warm-toned. Part of the reason behind that is because, despite today’s technological advances, there are certain things that make it near impossible to re-create those exact colours from 20, 30, 40, even 50 or more years ago.

Cosmetic chemist Marisa Plescia describes the recreation of archival make-up shades as both an art and a science, citing technology such as spectrophotometers to help measure the exact colour of an archived product and aid with the new development. “Colours can shift over time,” she says. “If you are colour matching off a product that has been sitting around for a while and the sample is old, it may not have the same colour as when it was first produced.” She also cites regulations, new standards, consumer perceptions and ingredient innovation as issues that may help (or hinder) modern re-development of an age-old shade. “While the exact match might not always be possible, many brands can get very close with modern technology and a solid understanding of the original formula.”

Ingredients are one of the major reasons why it’s impossible to recreate products of the past, according to Alexis Androulakis, who has a background in product development and serves as one half of The Lipstick Lesbians. Like talc, once a common ingredient in beauty products and now frowned upon, certain materials are a major reason brands may not be able to achieve the exact same colour. There’s also carmine (a pigment made from crushed beetles), a frequent ingredient in Y2K and earlier products that now impacts vegan claims. “It’s about the chemicals we’re legally allowed to use today – it’s different from what they were allowed to do in the past,” says Nicola Formichetti, MAC’s global creative director. “If we did exactly the same today, we’d go to jail!” he jokes.

Many may credit the make-up artist and beauty historian Erin Parsons as being part of the reason why MAC rereleased its new reformulated Cool Spice shade, after countless videos of her comparing the new shades to the original 90s formulas. She tells Dazed that, in her opinion, it’s unlikely that a brand could perfectly recreate shades from decades ago. “There are too many variables here that make it difficult to determine what the colour actually looked like during that time. Also, many older formulas degrade over the years. For instance, something in a tube that was once a neutral brown may oxidise to a warmer rust. I have seen corals from the 1950s turn completely pink.”

Perhaps the biggest factor of make-up not looking like it once did, however, is the tan culture of the early 2000s to 2010s. “Finding cool undertones became increasingly difficult,” says Parsons. “In the 90s, you had a lot of neutral mauve, greige tones, neutral to warm browns, deep brick reds, sometimes muddy in a way. These are really missing from a lot of make-up brands today. I can’t say whether shades were better, but they simply did not all skew warm.” Parsons is still searching for a shade match to the Inoui lipliner created by Kevyn Aucoin in the 90s. And even after countless shade re-releases, make-up artists like Not Another Hanna are doing things like wearing a blue lipliner under nude shades to get their desired effect.

Still, as someone who personally collects a lot of old make-up, I couldn’t help but wonder, is the nostalgia surrounding certain shades more about memory perception than the actual hue? And, do we even remember the shades of the past accurately? “People get emotionally attached to a product way more than they viscerally remember the colour itself,” says Androulakis. “They remember the way the product made them feel. They remember the way they felt when they looked at themselves wearing that product. They want to achieve that feeling. I’m sure there’s gonna be fanatics who might scream or notice the difference. I think people think they want it. But they want to remember that moment in time.”

Androulakis is of the mindset that it’s completely impossible to 100 per cent accurately recreate a shade of the past, or even of the present. “Literal lipsticks that are batched in 2025, 99.9 per cent of the time, these batches have variances,” she says. “There is no one methodical machine-driven way for the exact same raw materials to have the exact same nuance of texture, especially when it comes to shades... Even if you bought a product in 2025 from the same product line, you very well could have two different lots. What I mean by that is you could have bought something that was manufactured in the first half of 2025, and you then could have bought something that was manufactured in the second half of 2025. And if you’re a really savvy product developer like me, you could see the differences from the same product in the same year, because there’s a slightly different manufacturing procedure.” 

Whether or not you’re on the make-up shade revival train, one of the most interesting parts of the whole trend of old shades and archive products making a comeback is just how much this movement has been crowdsourced from popular make-up influencers and real customers. “I just think it’s interesting that my videos on Spice lipliner led to the recreation of MAC launching Cool Spice,” says Parsons. “I never thought my videos would make such an impact but it seems to be working. The nudes launch was a success and many creators besides myself talked about older colours from MAC they loved and wanted to see come back.” 

Nostalgia in beauty will never die. People of all ages will forever chase the feeling of a specific lipstick or their favourite teenage eye shadow shade, even their old favourite fragrances. After all, it’s what keeps the industry alive.