Gigi Hadid’s Makeup Artist Shares Her $8 Secret For Sun-Kissed Freckles

For the large and responsible majority, this past summer was an indoor one. Given the global pandemic, most of us cancelled our regularly-scheduled beach vacations, bachelorette parties, and Saturdays spent drinking on rooftops and instead leaned into Zoom events, home-edit projects, and self-care skin routines in front of our A/C unit.

However, now that you're officially entering fall and used to stepping into back-to-school season with a tiny bit of a tan, you might be feeling a little disappointed. But according to celebrity makeup artist Erin Parsons, who works with all the big-name models and was recently tapped to design the beauty look for Jason Wu's runway presentation at New York Fashion Week, there's a cheap and easy way to fake sun-kissed skin and freckles this fall.

As a complement to Wu's Tulum-inspired Spring/Summer 2021 fashion collection, Parsons gave the models (who, like us, have probably been inside all summer) a believable smattering of faux freckles using a creative technique and a liquid lipstick you can grab at the drugstore.

Parsons, who partnered with Maybelline to create the look, used the brand's foundation to even out the models' skin before layering on the fan-favorite Cheek Heat liquid blush in the shade Nude Barn (a gorgeous mauve brown). Then — for the magic trick — Parsons applied the faux freckles with a splatter-paint "flecking" motion. "I dipped a flat brush into the SuperStay Matte Ink lipstick — the brown shades of Espresso Enthusiast and Chai Genius — and just flecked the pigment onto the models' skin," she explains.

As a bonus, Parsons tells us that her novel lipstick-smattering trick is resistant to pesky mask transfer. "Since the models had to wear masks following application, we designed the look so that that freckles would not move," she tells us, adding that the end result looks totally natural. "Think about it, when you’re on vacation — or back from vacation — you don’t really wear much makeup." We're both impressed and inspired, and pretty certain that faux freckles might just become the budding fall trend in no-makeup makeup.