The Scariest Beauty and Fashion Trends of 2022

Know that you will look like a haunted baby doll if you bleach your brows. (Of course, that’s some people’s whole thing these days.) For those of us still dealing with the consequences of having overplucked our brows in the 90s, this trend is inexplicable.

The tiny glasses trend has been around for a while now, though no one has managed to wear them quite as well as Lisa Bonet in the ’80s. For everyone else, it will sort of make you look like Roger Stone when he was dressed as the Babadook. Unsettling!

Like the night of the living dead, the low-rise pants trend rises from the grave. No matter the absolute trauma you endured trying to make this look work in 2005—and forget the screaming match with your mom in the Wet Seal dressing room—low-rises have returned. And like a lot of trends, this one is designed only for the thinnest of thin, which makes it absolutely terrifying for the rest of us.

Admittedly, these Tabi-inspired shoes are less eerie or spooky than they are hobbit-like. Personally, I don’t understand the appeal of accentuating your big toe unless it’s for elevated troll cosplay.

Boo! Julia Fox appears a few times on this list because she is the only one daring enough to take on multiple of these terrifying trends. Here she is in her iconic ghoulish eyeliner that she has let us KNOW she does herself. Julia, we believe you! This look is very day-to-night, if you’re headed straight to a haunted house.

You can cover your eyes, but you literally cannot cover your ass with this revived trend—yet another look from the early aughts that is stalking us into this decade. Nicole Kidman rocked the mega-mini on her Vanity Fair cover, and it sent a few folks to an early grave: death by shock and horror at a woman over 28 showing off her body. I am afraid of the micro-mini, not because I think women shouldn’t show their legs, but because sitting on the subway train in one of these is inviting unknown diseases into my body.

Whale tails have breached the fashion waters yet again this year. This is more of a psychological fear for me: I see a thong peeking above a waist hem, and I’m pulled back into my dark middle school days when a girl named Samantha bullied me for not wearing a padded bra. I shiver at the memory.

Whether it’s this $1,800 Balenciaga purse meant to look like a Lays potato chip bag or these $425 jeans with fake mud on them, the fashion world is still romping around their pretend trailer park, cosplaying as poor and working class. It shouldn’t be scary at this point, but the fact that a lot of people still buy this crap is hair-raising.

Here again we have Ms. Fox giving us a literal window into her booty crack. Fox really pushed boundaries with cutouts this year, and I quiver thinking about my body parts being contained in the small pockets of remaining fabric in these outfits. Talk about body horror! What’s next, a straight-up glory hole in our jeans?

What is scarier than a woman come undone? Pants come undone. Pants come unbuttoned. Pants...never buttoned. The un-buttoned pants look, which the New York Times explored, does give “running out of my house from a serial killer who found me in the shower and barely had time to get dressed.” Also the constant fear of your pants falling down? Ominous!