Rihanna’s Makeup Artist Breaks Down the TikTok Trend of Using Pink Lipstick to Cover Dark Circles

Watching TikTok videos of people swiping red and pink lipstick under their eyes is endlessly entertaining. It sounds out-of-the-box, and it is, but for some people it’s a miracle-working hack for masking dark circles and looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Celebrity makeup artist Priscilla Ono—she’s Rihanna’s go-to and the global makeup artist for Fenty Beauty—uses a similar technique on RiRi, and says there’s a new product launching that will make the hack even easier to achieve. Here’s the scoop.

“This trend is going crazy on TikTok right now,” says Ono. “People are literally taking pink lipstick and mixing it with their concealer and applying it under their eyes, or mixing pink blush with their powder under their eyes to create this soft-focus kind of look. Color correction really goes back to the color wheel: We makeup artists use it to see what the opposite colors are. The opposite from red is green, so red will really help to correct any green veins or dark circles under the eyes, and pink is a tint of red.”

Ono points to Fenty Beauty’s brand-new Match Stix Correcting Skinsticks ($28) in four shades—Rose Quartz, Banana, Peach and Pumpkin—that are designed to brighten and neutralize dark under-eye circles and discoloration before applying foundation. “I think Rose Quartz will be a heavy-hitter when people get their hands on it because it almost gives you this pink effect under your eyes from the get go, so no more mixing your lipstick and concealer,” says Ono. “On fair skin, it looks beautiful—it’s your perfect brightening shade that’s going to get rid of any gray or green under the eyes and make them pop.”

On Rihanna, Ono uses the Peach shade, which she says is best for medium-tan skin. “Pink is more for fair skin, Peach is good for medium-tan skin, Banana is also good for tan skin, and Pumpkin is good for deep skin. Essentially, every skin tone category has their perfect brightening shade, and your skin tone matters because each skin tone has a different undertone in problem areas, like the under-eyes being more green than purple.” Though Banana is yellow and doesn’t fall in the pinkish-red family, that’s for good reason: “Yellow cancels out purple,” Ono says. “A lot of times people with tan skin tones have this bruisy-purple tone under their eyes, and this helps cancel that out.”

If you’re not sure which one is best for you, on the brand’s website, you can see which color-correcting Match Stix works for you depending on which shade of Fenty foundation you use (click on each shade and a chart will populate in the lefthand image bar).