Hauntology is the study of what lingers. Not the past, exactly—but the presence of the past in the now. And not quite the future either—but the futures we imagined, that never fully arrived.
It’s the static between time zones of the self—when something is gone but not absent, over but still unfolding. A concept birthed in philosophy, but felt most acutely in the body. In the everyday. In the rituals we repeat without knowing why. In the ache we feel when something feels almost right, but off—like we’re rehearsing a life that was supposed to be ours but somehow slipped sideways. Beauty is one of the most familiar languages of this dissonance.
Because when we reach for the eyeliner, or layer the concealer, we’re often doing more than painting a face.
We’re negotiating timelines. We’re trying to make peace with the person we used to be—the one who first picked up a lipstick and didn’t know what she was doing. We’re editing the present, smoothing the contradictions between how we feel and how we want to be perceived. And sometimes, consciously or not, we’re still chasing a version of ourselves that never quite materialized—one we thought we’d be by now.
Makeup sits at this intersection of memory, performance, and desire.
We call it transformation, but it’s also translation: of longings, of regrets, of inherited ideals.
You’re not just covering a blemish—you’re confronting a story about flawlessness you didn’t even choose. And maybe that’s why it never feels quite finished. Because beauty, like hauntology, resists closure. There is no final form. Only reappearances. Only flickers of the human you were, the person you thought you’d become, and the stranger you keep surprising yourself by turning into.