After three seasons, February 17 marks the official end date of Hulu drama Tell Me Lies. The bombshell series finale isn’t just tying up loose plot points: It’s sealing off a Y2K collegiate time capsule that’s felt so accurate it’s easy to forget the show premiered in 2022.
Based on Carola Lovering’s 2018 novel, Tell Me Lies follows a group of college friends and centers on the toxic on-and-off relationship between sophomore Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) and senior Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White). The story unfolds in two separate timelines with two distinct, memorable aesthetics: one set between 2007 and 2008 at Baird College, a fictional campus in upstate New York, and one set in 2015, when the group reunites as adults for a wedding.
Since its premiere, Tell Me Lies has helped contribute to the recent resurgence of Y2K beauty trends, inspiring fans online to dig up their smudgy eyeliner pencils and frosted lipglosses. But lead makeup designer Jenny Lin didn’t want to simply recreate an iconic beauty era—she also used it as a storytelling tool. “Overall, the season’s beauty language is about makeup as emotional armor, identity, and the visual tension between control and emotional spiraling,” Lin tells Glamour. “I’m really proud of what we’ve done.”
“The show is so incredible from a makeup perspective and the period is so nostalgic to me,” Lin continues, noting that she collaborated closely with creator and showrunner Megan Oppenheimer to incorporate products they both used “down to the nub” during their own early aughts college years. “It’s part of the storytelling element and the world-building. I’m so glad that people are noticing the subtleties that we’ve all incorporated into the hair, makeup, costumes, and props laying around.”
As its title suggests, Tell Me Lies is not a wholesome story. As Lucy, Stephen, and their friends become intertwined in each others’ lives, the show explores themes of narcissism, emotional abuse, blackmail, and toxic codependency. Friendships and couples form only to implode, and eight years’ worth of secrets, lies, and betrayals come to a head in the series finale.
While (thankfully) not every viewer can relate to the specific trauma that the Tell Me Lies alumni carry out of college, the show bottles up a type of bittersweet nostalgia that’s hard to replicate. Specifically? How small and consequential the world can feel at 19 when you’re doing your makeup for a frat party and vexing over the rumors ripping through your campus like wildfire.
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When creating looks for Lucy’s character in particular, Lin says that she used makeup as a character device. “As her emotional spiral escalates, the makeup becomes less about style and more like a symptom,” she says. In addition to the symbolism behind Lucy’s look, Lin highlights the stress rashes and absent-minded curling iron burns she was able to create on Van Patten’s skin thanks to her special-effects background. “Lucy’s approach to beauty is designed to break down as she does, conveying her anxiety, lack of sleep, impulsivity, and dissociation,” Lin says.
Ahead, Lin dives deep on the creative process behind Tell Me Lies beauty—the good, the bad, the ugly, and the worth-copying-immediately in 2026. Read on for her behind-the-scenes perspective, the hero products that helped her recapture a bygone era, and key finale moments you won’t want to miss.
Glamour: Tell Me Lies is a masterclass in Y2K makeup. Who were your main beauty references?
Jenny Lin: One of our big, big beauty inspirations was Lauren Conrad from The Hills, especially for Grace [Van Patten]. But yeah, everyone from the time, like Avril Lavigne, Lauryn Hill—Britney Spears was a huge influence, I had her all over the inside of my trailer. I pulled from a lot of the magazines and the runways at the time because I wanted to see how extreme the makeup got. But a lot of it also was based on my lived experience.
A huge part of why this work feels grounded is that I actually lived this era first-hand—I worked at MAC during college during the exact time period the show is set in. So I was also pulling from memory and logic of how girls wore makeup then. When you were poor in college, that $14 MAC Duochrome eyeshadow was a splurge, but you had to have it. And you used it down to the pan.
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That reminds me of a pivotal moment in season one when Lucy puts on her roommate’s MAC lipstick before going on her first date with Stephen. That’s a major turning point in her character’s life and it’s marked by a beauty choice.
Megan Oppenheimer wrote “MAC Chili Lipstick,” in for that scene, and I almost had a heart attack. We had to reach out to the brand and get together with legal to get it onscreen. Seeing how much thought was put into these characters’ beauty choices—that a period-correct MAC shade was literally scripted in—I was like, this is a dream. I love this already.
There’s actually another big red lip moment in Season 3. The red-lip look Lucy puts on before her date with Alex represents the height of her spiral: She looks overdone and is overcompensating. She reaches for that lipstick at the exact moment she’s unknowingly the least safe at the start of her disassociation.
Tell Me Lies is set during an iconic beauty era. Yet, as a pro, you had to create looks that could believably have been done by college students in a dorm room. How did you approach that?
It’s all about authenticity; I wanted them to look like what any of us would’ve done. They needed to feel like real girls in that era, not like a parody or like a Y2K Pinterest board you’d see today. Lucy, for example, always had a rim of Smolder MAC eye pencil—even when she’s waking up in the morning. I wanted it to look like it’s smudged in her waterline still; we all slept in our makeup back then, nobody cleaned their face properly after a party.
Each of the three main girls [Lucy, Pippa, and Bree] has her makeup bag, and when they go to frat parties, they’re all getting ready together. We established in season one that Pippa always would help the girls with their makeup, so that’s why those party looks can be a little bit bigger. But I never want them to look super done because really, some of that authentic Y2K makeup is just bad by today’s standards. I wanted it to be period-correct and with modern formulation so it looks cinematic. It needed to look real.
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Those themed frat parties were a big part of the show, especially this season. What did your creative process look like—from learning the themes to planning each makeup look?
A beautiful part about working with Megan is she gave us all our scripts at the top of the season—she had all eight episodes written already. So that way the costume designer and I were able plot out the characters’ visual arcs to see where we wanted them to look more explosive and using clothing and makeup choices to hint at what was coming. I think that’s why my makeup was able to be so dynamic, because I could plan based on the emotional storytelling—the identity shifts and the power dynamics.
I collaborated closely with the director of photography for those party scenes because the show is shot pretty dark, and we had to work a lot with where the lighting is in those rooms. I always check with Charlotte Svenson, the costume designer, before I start designing my looks because she has been in talks with Megan and the creatives for weeks. The makeup is the cherry on top but the face is also very important.
I feel like we outdid ourselves in season three. Look, we went overboard. I don’t think there is such a thing as too much, but we did it. Yet nothing was accidental. The makeup choices—how every girl would interpret the same party theme—were always about character psychology and where they were in their emotional spirals. For example, what’s so significant about the goth-themed makeup in episode six is that it spans past the party into two very long nights for Lucy and Bree’s characters. We built it up to break it down.
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Did you have a favorite party theme?
The Decades party was my favorite. All three girls were representing the eighties, so I had to differentiate the looks in a way with their costumes. The glitter I used there was one of the only instances where we chose not to go period-correct. I used multi-sized Lemonhead glitter which we didn’t have back then. We needed the reflectivity, we needed the texture. But that’s where the modern edge of my design kind of comes in—to play with light and play with the intensity of the movements in these intense moments onscreen.
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Tell Me Lies follows two storylines—one set in 2007-2008, when the characters are in college, and one set in 2015, when they’re reuniting for Evan and Bree’s wedding. How did you use makeup to convey that passage of time?
This season I approached makeup as a narrative map. There’s a clear world-building contrast between the college timeline—more youthful, lived-in, glowing, imperfect realism—and the later timeline where the faces become more mature and constructed.
For the college era, I worked very subtly. Trends definitely played in—we were situated right after that high-shimmer Paris Hilton era where there was a lot of MAC, Juicy Tube lips, Urban Decay metallic eyes, and the eyebrows were a little better. Lived-in makeup, runny waterlines—pretty but not perfect. Hourglass Tubing Mascara was our hero mascara to withstand all the tears and meltdowns! I also really focused on giving everyone fresh, glowing skin to make them look youthful. I get so many compliments on the skin in this show.
We’re shooting in HD so the makeup can never have texture if you want it to look real—that’s a testament to all the modern formulations now. We used Armani Luminous Silk on Grace and Koh Gen Do—a Japanese foundation I’ve worked with for over a decade—on the other girls. I also used cream blushes (Tower 28 Beach Please for Lucy) and faux freckles from Marylia Scott Cosmetics—a brand that Grace actually recommended to me—which all melted into these complexion products beautifully.
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And then when you go into 2015 that is the start of YouTube tutorials. That is the start of contour and Kylie Cosmetics. A lot of that shift within that short period was a lot of trend-based products. I remember in season one, I was like, oh, this is so exciting, because that’s going to help age the characters too. I have the girls in more cut creases. They’ve started using lip liner and are doing matte instead of glossy lips. They have obvious contour and no visible freckles. They’re also at a formal event, so I wanted the skin to look more polished. I still used the Armani foundation, but I did more powdering. I want it to look more like satin matte skin textures.
In addition to seeing these characters on either side of a time jump, we also witness them change a lot during the college timeline—often in response to trauma. There’s a big moment around the Season 3 finale where Lucy is staring at a photo of herself during her first days at Baird College. It really hits us, as viewers, how different she looks.
There’s the pre-Stephen look and the post-Stephen look. If you look at shots of Lucy first coming to Baird, she looks so youthful. She’s warm, soft, and untouched. There’s literally not a lick of black on her face—none of that heavy black liner we later see at parties and still smeared into the waterline the next day. Instead, it was brown mascara, brown liner, and no contrast. Lots of freckles. No intentional lip, barely any cream blush. That was really it. And then she meets Stephen and everything changes.
Is she putting on a mask for him with her makeup, or just becoming more hyper-aware of herself and how she’s being perceived?
After meeting Stephen, the show becomes a slow visual breakdown. The makeup turns more reactive, more protective, more mask-like…almost a timeline of Lucy’s nervous system on a roller coaster. In this particular scene, her makeup isn’t the message, the contrast is.
For a show that deals with heavy themes and characters who are pretty awful to each other, it seems like there’s a lot of love in this cast. What was the energy like behind the scenes?
Beautiful. There’s a lot of love on that set; there are a lot of real-life couples and I think that just adds to it. And when we all collaborate together, Grace and Catherine [Missal], for example, aren’t just sitting there and letting me do things. We talk through the looks and why they make sense for Lucy and Bree each episode. I’ll bring ideas to the table and they will too.
It’s just a beautiful collaboration in the trailer. And Jackson, who plays Stephen, loves his Peanut M&M candies that I always keep in a little candy machine for him. It’s cute things like that. Everyone has their stuff. Sonia [Mena], who plays Pippa, actually bought a pink Tell Me Lies espresso machine for when we all have coffee. It’s just such a healthy set compared to what we see onscreen. I miss them so much.
That’s the way I run a department, too, with all the makeup and hair artists. Because before the actor goes out on set, they need to feel comfortable with us. As a makeup designer, I think it’s so crucial for the actors to be in a good headspace when they’re with me and then when they leave. They need to feel beautiful and ready. I make sure they have all that before they step out the door to do their job.
Grace McCarty is the associate beauty editor at Glamour.
