DISAPPEARING ACTS

A Visual History of Celebrities With Bleached Eyebrows

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Chloë Sevigny with bleached eyebrows.
It should come as no surprise that Chloë Sevigny was ahead of the trend. She first gave bleached brows a go for her 1997 film ‘Gummo,’ then reprised them on the red carpet in 2003. Photo via Getty Images.

Bleached eyebrows have long been one of the most polarizing looks in beauty—to perhaps even right up there with the mullet. And yet, in recent years, (almost always temporary) versions have become somewhat mainstream among celebs. They’ve even shown up on some of the Kardashian-Jenners—much to many of their fans’ distress. (Detractors can take comfort in the fact that Adele wouldn’t bleach hers for the world; the singer recently revealed that she regularly uses dye to combat her perceived resemblance to the pasty, hairless villain Voldemort.) Kim, Kendall, and co. are hardly alone in experimenting with the look solely for photo shoots and runway shows. The boldest of celebrities, on the other hand, stay committed—most notably Kristen Stewart and Maisie Williams. Take a look back at some of the most memorable disappearing brow acts in recent celebrity history, here.

Lila Moss
Photo by Tristan Fewings/BFC via Getty Images

Kate Moss’s daughter Lila Moss was among the many models whom Richard Quinn convinced to try out the look for his spring 2022 show. She appears to have had a much better experience than her mom did earlier in her career. “Thankfully, they’ve mastered the art of bleaching eyebrows now, and then dyeing them straight back,” Kate told Cosmopolitan in 2013. “Makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin once burnt my eyebrows off when he was bleaching them for a shoot, I literally had scabs there!”

Amelia Gray Hamlin

Amelia Gray Hamlin, who also walked the show, stuck with hers for a tad longer. They might soon make a comeback: She recently asked her followers if she should dye them back (and got quite a few no’s in response).

Katy Perry

Katy Perry made it clear that the look was solely for the purpose of American Idol’s Disney Night episode, captioning the Instagram of her Tinkerbell costume “going to go dye my brows back now.”

Lizzo

“HOW NOW, BLONDE BROW?,” Lizzo captioned her reveal on Instagram. The singer stuck with the look for a good chunk of the summer, and at one point experimented with turning them pink.

Maisie Williams
Photo by David M. Benett via Getty Images

Maisie Williams had long been known for her bold, dark brows. But over the past year or so, the former Game of Thrones star has instead been known for dabbling in bleach.

Kim Kardashian
Courtesy of @kimkardashian

Kim Kardashian was careful to clarify that the makeover was just for a photo-shoot. In fact, her brows were back to brown by that very night.

Katy Perry
Courtesy of @katyperry

Katy Perry made it clear that the look was strictly temporary after appearing on American Idol, wearing wings.

Halsey
Courtesy of @halsey

“It’s the simplicity for me,” Halsey captioned a photo of herself wearing her vegan beauty line, About-Face.

Adriana Lima

Adriana Lima shied from sharing any details about the project that had her going (semi) blonde in the summer of 2019. At the time, she posted an Instagram poll asking if she should keep them, and the response wasn’t the most supportive. “I had no idea she would look this incredible without eyebrows!,” makeup artist Erin Parsons wrote in a throwback on Instagram. “And to her fans that hated it, don’t worry I dyed them back 😅.” Clearly, not everyone was a hater: Lima’s bleached brows starred on the cover of Japanese Vogue a few months later.

Katherine Langford
Courtesy of @katherinelangford

13 Reasons Why star Katherine Langford

Lady Gaga

A Saint Laurent show in 2016 is far from the only occasion that Lady Gaga has appeared brow-less; when she appeared backstage at the Marc Jacobs show later that month, where she joined Kendall Jenner and the rest of the cast in another round of bleaching, she told Vogue that she bleaches her eyebrows every day.

Madonna

Of course, before Gaga, there was Madonna, who admittedly stood out at the release party for her book Sex in 1992 more because of her companion that evening, rather than her facial hair.

Jaden Smith

When Jaden Smith shaved his eyebrows last summer, reactions were not exactly positive. Since then, though, he’s grown them back a bit and turned it into something of signature look.

Kristen Stewart

A few weeks after she turned up on the red carpet of the 2019 Met Gala with her brows painted orange, yellow, and white, Kristen Stewart went all in, fully bleaching them ahead of her appearance at a Chanel show in Seoul.

Kendall Jenner

When it comes to eyebrow bleaching, Kendall Jenner is nothing if not outspoken. “They literally fall OUT! It’s bad—I really hate getting a bleach,” she wrote on her website in 2016—though that didn’t stop her from bleaching them from Marc Jacobs that same year, just as she did in the above instance, in 2014.

Cara Delevingne

The fact that Cara Delevingne’s bushy brown eyebrows were still her first and foremost claim to fame only made it more daring when she, like Kendall Jenner, bleached them for Givenchy in 2014.

Kim Kardashian

And while Cara Delevingne had moved on from the look when she ran into Kim Kardashian a few months later, the latter was just trying it out for herself. Kardashian, too, made the sacrifice for fashion, as she made clear via the hashtagged disclaimer “#ItsForAPhotoShoot.”

Gigi Hadid

A month after she bleached her brows for a Prada campaign, Gigi Hadid reprised the look in Milan, along with the rest of the cast that walked the house’s show for fall 2019.

Jared Leto

Jared Leto began making ghost-like appearances, such as the above, in 1998, while filming Fight Club. In recent years, he’s made similar sacrifices—to the point that he’s said they don’t grow back as quickly as they used to.

Miley Cyrus

Back when she was just being full-on Miley on Instagram, in late 2013, Miley Cyrus also went full-on blonde. She may have deleted the post above, but her look is forever memorialized on a 2014 cover of W.

Katy Perry

According to Katy Perry, her last minute to bleach her brows before stepping onto the red carpet of the 2016 Met Gala gave her stylist “a panic attack.” And according to her date that night, Derek Blasberg, “everyone” told her the idea was “horrible.”

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