For the singer’s first headlining shows in Japan, makeup artist Sophia Sinot looked to anime, Shibuya street style, and one very famous cat.

Before this month, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/zara-larsson-age-parents-boyfriend-songs-facts-to-know-tour-concerts">Zara Larsson</a> had never headlined in Japan. For her first two shows there, sold-out nights at The Garden Hall in Tokyo’s Ebisu neighborhood on Oct. 7 and 8, her longtime makeup artist, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/zara-larsson-best-makeup-looks-beauty-moments-eyeshadow-eyeliner-crystals-bold-colors-photos-inspiration">Sophia Sinot</a>, turned the occasion into a tribute to Japanese beauty, borrowing from manga, gyaru, and Sanrio along the way.
On the <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/zara-larsson-deluxe-album-collabs-features-midnight-sun-girls-trip-tyla-shakira-madison-beer-robyn">Midnight Sun Tour</a>, Larsson’s face changes nearly every night. Sinot has said she often starts the makeup without telling Larsson what they’re doing that day. “We know each other so well and that honestly helps my creative process a lot,” she told <a href="https://www.voguescandinavia.com/articles/zara-larsson-midnight-sun-tour-makeup">Vogue Scandinavia</a> last year. Tokyo just gave her a theme.
Below, a look at both nights and the Japanese beauty references behind them.

<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">Night One: Manga Blush and Doll Lashes</h2>

For the first show, Sinot started with the base she’s relied on all tour, a golden tan powdered down to a matte finish, then layered shimmer on top. On the eyes, a soft <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/lilac-makeup-beauty-trend-eyeshadow-blush-best-products-inspiration-runway-looks-zendaya-chase-infiniti-zara-larsson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lilac</a> washed over the lids, with bright white in the inner corners, beneath the brows, and along the lower lash line. The liner was the most graphic part of the face: black wings stretching past the outer corners, with spiky hand-drawn lashes flicking out above and below, a nod to the oversized eyes of manga and anime heroines. Clustered false lashes added volume on top.

Then came the <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/cool-toned-blush-where-to-shop-light-pink-blushes-cream-powder-formulas">blush</a>. Sinot swept a soft pink high across the cheekbones and drew diagonal pink hatch marks over it, the same shorthand manga artists use to show a character blushing. Sitting just beneath the eyes rather than on the apples of the cheeks, the placement echoes igari makeup, and the contrast between Larsson’s bronzed skin and all that white around her eyes recalls '90s gyaru styles.&nbsp;
The <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/lip-stain-liners-lip-combination-sacheu-wonderskin-summer-fridays">lip</a>, at least, stayed classic Midnight Sun: overlined in a peachy brown and finished with gloss. Glitter was dusted down her neck and collarbones, and she wore pink rhinestone hoops.

Sinot has been working with this vocabulary for years. A look she created on Sano in 2022 used the same hatched pink blush and spiky black liner, with a few drawn-on stars scattered across the cheeks and a bright white line along the waterline.

<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">Night Two: Hello Kitty</h2>

For the second show, Sinot went straight to the source. Hello Kitty was designed by Sanrio’s Yuko Shimizu in 1974 and first appeared on a vinyl coin purse the following year, and her face is simple enough to read from the back of a concert hall. Sinot translated it feature by feature: a red bow built from crystals and outlined in black, set above one brow the way Kitty wears hers over one ear; three black glitter whiskers on each cheek; and a small yellow dot on the tip of the nose.
Frosty white shimmer covered the lids up to the brows, a nod to the character’s white face (her full name, according to Sanrio, is Kitty White), and more crystals were scattered across the lids. A vivid pink blush ran across the cheeks and over the bridge of the nose.

The crystals are a Japanese reference of their own. Decoden, the craft of covering phones and compacts in rhinestones and charms, took off in Japan in the early 2000s, and Larsson’s bow looks like it could have been lifted off one of those phone cases.
The eyes were softer than the night before, with a short black flick at the outer corners in place of the spiky, drawn-on lashes. And one detail was all Sinot. Kitty famously doesn’t have a mouth, but Larsson kept her signature lip, a glossy tawny brown with a defined liner.

<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">The Japanese Makeup Looks Behind the Glam</h2>

Sinot's Tokyo looks recall several distinct Japanese beauty movements, each with its own history and approach to makeup.

Born on the streets of Shibuya in the 1990s and spread through magazines like egg and Popteen, gyaru favored tanned skin, bleached hair, and stacks of false lashes. Its most extreme offshoots, ganguro and yamanba, pushed the tan even deeper and painted white concealer and shadow around the eyes and lips. The style has seen a revival online in recent years.

Named for Japanese hair and makeup artist Shinobu Igari, igari makeup moves blush off the apples of the cheeks and up to just beneath the eyes, sometimes sweeping it across the nose. Its nickname, “hangover makeup,” says a lot about the intended effect. It became a full-blown trend in the mid-2010s, and its influence is easy to spot in Sinot’s sunburnt blush.

Namida-Bukuro

In Japanese beauty, the namida-bukuro, or “tear bag,” is the small puff of skin just beneath the lower lash line. Accentuating it, with a pearly light shade pressed under the lashes and a faint brown shadow drawn beneath, is meant to make the eyes look larger and softer. Korean beauty calls the same feature aegyo-sal. Sinot's bright white lower liner on night one similarly exaggerates the eyes, although it replaces the subtle shading of traditional namida-bukuro makeup with a more graphic finish.

Kawaii and Decora

Kawaii, or cute, culture gave the world Hello Kitty. Harajuku street style gave it decora: layers of hair clips, plastic jewelry, and stickers or rhinestones placed directly on the face, all documented for two decades by photographer Shoichi Aoki in FRUiTS magazine. The stars on Sinot’s 2022 look and the crystal bow on Larsson’s Hello Kitty glam both belong to that tradition.

<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">How to Recreate Zara Larsson’s Tokyo Makeup</h2>

Sinot has shared a few of her tour techniques, and they translate well at home. For bright eyeshadow that won’t go patchy, she lays down a very light layer of foundation on the lids, sets it with translucent powder, and pats color on with a flat brush instead of dragging it, working from the lightest shade to the darkest.
For the manga blush, apply a pink cream or powder high on the cheekbones first, then draw the hatch marks on top with a fine liner brush or a pink lip pencil. And for Hello Kitty, all you need is a red bow (rhinestones optional), three whiskers per cheek, and a dot of yellow on the nose, which makes it an easy makeup-only Halloween costume, too.
The recreations have already started. Below, find a few of our favorites.

Zara Larsson’s Tokyo Glam, From Anime Blush to Hello Kitty Whiskers

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