Since the 2020s, beauty has gone way beyond skin. First, it was aesthetically designed hand sanitisers hanging off our bags. Now, it’s phone grips and lip balm key chains. The latest to enter the scene of beauty flexing is under-eye patches. Aesthetic selfies, logo-fied pieces, and seen across grocery runs, coffee shop dates, and plane rides.
A piece of skincare prep has become a way to posture online, flex social capital and cultural relevancy, and has essentially gone from skincare to skin accessory.
But how did we get here?
If the imagery has anything to do with it, it’s rarely about the eye patch but rather what is on the eye patch and what exactly that eye patch can signify. Under-eye patches have been a part of the beauty industry, and skincare routines, for decades, but the recent shift in their popularity has everything to do with branding.
While some have plain coloured pieces on their under-eyes, recent releases by brands almost feel as if they were designed to be Instagram-friendly. For many, they are monogrammed and in an era of beauty flexing, having the monogram right by the eyes can be a performative way to signal a particular lifestyle without actually breaking the bank on luxury purchases. This can be said especially for luxury beauty brands which allow an attainable entry point.
But on the flip side, under-eye patches are a single-use product that don’t take up much real estate on the face. So why not stretch its use case? By turning the under-eye patch into an accessory, the under-eye patch can outlive its original purpose. And in an era of economic instability and rising cost of living, making your beauty products stretch past their lifetime just sounds like a smart thing to do.
The same can be said with face masks, which have also become a piece of skincare that performs more than skincare.
However, at the end of the day, those using under-eye patches are still taking care of their skin and that’s what ultimately matters. While it’s performative, a quick selfie with the words ‘Chanel’ all over the skin only documents the current times beauty is navigating in.
