One need only look back to the early 2000s – when aggressive fake tans, peroxide blonde hair and excessive lip gloss were all the rage – to know that beauty trends really are just that: trends.
We can all get sucked into new celebrity makeup ‘looks’ or haircuts but, despite our desire for novelty, some style icons are considered so beautiful that they seem to transcend ‘trends’ entirely.
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So what happens when you merge these classic stunners with some truly modern beauty procedures? Well, that’s exactly what one Instagram account, discovered by Refinery29, explores.
London-based artist, Mat Maitland (@matmaitland) takes a handful of vintage icons and gives them the ‘2018 treatment’, Photoshopping fillers, botox and nose jobs onto the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.
The result? Bloody spooky.
Maybe it’s because these familiar faces suddenly become quite different to look at, or because their ‘new’ faces look eerily similar to some of today’s most famous celebrities. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
Scroll down to see some truly ~freaky~ Photoshop skillz.
Marilyn Monroe probably couldn’t move her face if it had this much work done:
Audrey Hepburn just looks utterly bonkers:
Meanwhile, Grace Kelly is an actual Barbie doll:
Holy crap, so is Princess Diana:
But rather than using his work to condemn cosmetic procedures like botox and fillers, Maitland explains that his creations are about merging different beauty ‘ideals’ across time.
“Some people might look at this series and believe that I am making a hard commentary on cosmetic procedures. This isn’t the case at all,” the artist told Paper. “I’ve always been fascinated by people who push beauty to the extreme.”
“Cosmetic approaches to beauty were previously restricted to celebrities and the mega wealthy but these have now become more attainable.
Maitland, however, is fascinated with imagining, “celebrities of the past altering their iconic looks to fit in with today’s more clone-like ideals.”
