Will Men’s Makeup Ever Go Mainstream?

In his wide-leg gray pants, black cashmere top and leather jacket, French TikTok star Bách Buquen looks very much like someone who’s just spent three weeks jet-setting from one fashion week event to the next: Calvin Klein in New York. Gucci in Milan. Jacquemus in Paris. But if the 20-year‑old is weary from travel or the grind of after-parties when he sits down at a Paris restaurant in October, it doesn’t show on his face. Looking good at all times is part of Buquen’s job as one of today’s most recognizable beauty influencers. His mission, he says, is to “normalize makeup for men.” In 2025 alone that ambition will earn him half a million dollars from sponsorship deals with MAC, Charlotte Tilbury and other cosmetics brands. “It’s a light makeup,” Buquen says of his daily look. “Smooth, simple, not too much.”

Buquen has amassed 4.6 million followers on Instagram and twice as many on TikTok in just two years. That he’s cultivated such a large following so quickly speaks not only to his charisma and good looks but also to the appeal of his signature videos, which focus on his skin-care routine and take a playful approach to makeup tutorials. In one sponsored TikTok post from last summer, he appears shirtless at a public workout park and applies a bit of blush under L’Oréal SA’s Infallible 3-Second Setting Mist before busting out a set of pull-ups. In other videos, shot in his kitchen, on the streets or from the deck of a yacht, he lip-synchs and dances to viral remixes of hit songs, stopping occasionally to put on a bit of foundation or eyeliner.