I Never Thought This "Dated" Lip Color Could Look Cool Again—Here's Why It's So Back for 2025

Between Lady Gaga’s recession-pop resurgence à la her new single “Abracadabra” (which had a surprise debut during the Grammys!) and MAC’s recent Y2K-inspired makeup campaign, it’s as if we’ve thrown a line back in time and adopted whichever noughties trend our hooks drudged up. Wholesale Replica Bag to resurface? Concealer lips.
Professional makeup artists told us that nude lipsticks were going to be big in 2025, but not in the soft, warm colorways that we’re used to. “We’ve already seen it with MAC, which has relaunched the nude lipsticks everyone was obsessed with in 2017,” Jamie Genevieve, makeup artist and founder of Vieve, previously toldBest Knockoff Luxury Clothing .
Celebrity MUAs such as Erin Parsons—who’s glammed the faces of Gigi Hadid and Ashley Graham—have been searching for lookalikes to the coveted ’00s versions of Fleshpot and Hodgepodge for years, and thanks to the brand’s star-studded nude-forward campaign (Julia Fox! Martha Stewart!), this trend is officially back on center stage—just in a more modern, wearable fashion.
The 2025 way to wear this turn-of-the-century look is to pair a cool-toned lip liner with a pale lipstick. Take it from model and Charli XCX knighted It girl Gabbriette, who, just three months ago, posted an Instagram Reel with Vogue France walking us through her signature two-step concealer lips: a thick line of MAC lip liner in Stone with a light wash of a (likely discontinued, eBay-sourced) concealer that reminds us of the brand’s Pro Longwear Paint Pot.
“[MAC] had it in the early 2000s for people to do that concealer lip, which I am obsessed with,” she says to the camera. Her tip? Dabbing it onto her lips with a finger to avoid the “crusty” look of the overly pale lipsticks of yore.
If you don’t want to go full millennial by applying a drying concealer onto your lips, we hear you. Keep reading to find nine of the best 2000s-inspired “concealer” lipsticks that deliver effortlessly cool, ashen (but never ashy) lips on any skin tone.
Shop Editor-Approved Concealer Lipsticks
Parsons once recommended this fleshy shade for a “wearable” concealer lip, thanks to its peachy undertones that suit a wide range of skin tones. But hurry—this one’s a sellout risk.
If you’re a pink-lipstick devotee but still want to channel your inner Y2K popstar, swipe on the shade Kim K.W. from Charlotte Tilbury. It’s basically OPI’s Bubble Bath in lipstick form.

Alyssa Brascia is an associate beauty editor atBest Knockoff Luxury Clothing . She is based in New York City and has nearly three years of industry experience, with rivers of content spanning from multigenerational lipstick reviews to celebrity fashion roundups. Brascia graduated with a BS in apparel, merchandising, and design from Iowa State University and went on to serve as a staff shopping writer at People.com for more than 2.5 years. Her earlier work can be found at InStyle, Travel + Leisure, Shape, and more. Brascia has personally tested more than a thousand beauty products, so if she’s not swatching a new eye shadow palette, she’s busy styling a chic outfit for a menial errand (because anywhere can be a runway if you believe hard enough).
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