It’s a week post-Women of the Year 2025 and we’re still thinking about all the major outfits from the red carpet – not to mention the beauty looks.
While there wasn’t a hair or eyelash out of place on the night, that isn’t always the case for our awardees: Rachel Zegler, the Sugababes, Adwoa Aboah, Hannah Hampton and The Dolls. As part of Glamour’s Girlhood Firsts video series, each honouree shared their fave nostalgic beauty mistake – highlighting that they’re not so different from us.
From jet black lip liner to fake tan face, read on to find out which nostalgic beauty looks Glamour’s Women of the Year 2025 winners shared.
Sugababes
Siobhán Donaghy: Well, I actually love it as a look, but you used to do black eyeliner on the lips. I feel like it could have been a chocolate brown…
Mutya Buena: Yeah, I think it was in.
Siobhán Donaghy: It was very much in.
Keisha Buchanan: They’re doing it now as well, but just better.
Siobhán Donaghy: I was probably just sad that I couldn't pull it off. Let’s be honest.
Mutya Buena: My one was I really ripped up my eyebrows. I had thin eyebrows.
Keisha Buchanan: We all know what I'm going to say. The boys in our band nicknamed me ‘Coolio’ for a reason. It was the China bumps, which was so ‘90s, so cool. It was the China bumps and spikes. No one could tell me nothing.
Mutya Buena: It was very cute.
Keisha Buchanan: Yeah, but it was going every which way and then with a black lip liner too.
Siobhán Donaghy: It was timeless. To be honest, I look back on that footage now and I think it’s very cool.
Keisha Buchanan: Yeah, I’m embarrassed by it.
Rachel Zegler
“I don’t like to think of any of them as mistakes rather than lessons, but I did chop all my hair off when I was in the first or second grade. I was obsessed with this photo of Katie Holmes in the early 2000s on a magazine cover and she had this edged beautiful haircut and I really wanted it.”
“My mum was wondering if I was certain about that, and I was. I don't think it was a mistake, I actually quite liked it, but I would say that that was definitely a lesson of mine and I didn't really want my hair that short, but I did keep it for a long time. Then famously I had a similar haircut for a film. I’m never going to cut my hair that short again but we need a fuck-ass bob.”
The Dolls
Mya Mehmi: My first big beauty mistake was definitely thick-ass eyebrows. One time my mum even tried to tell me that they were too much and I got so offended, but now I look back and she’s a real one for that. I should have listened.
Shon Faye: Oh, I struggled because there were many beauty mistakes. When I was a teenager and I first started doing makeup, I convinced myself I was good at applying lashes and I wasn’t. I applied the most dramatic lashes made out of various synthetic fabrics, including tinsel at one point. I used to be a bit of a party girl, so I would regularly sleep in my makeup and wake up in said lashes and just carry on with the day. That was a beauty mistake I made right up until the age of 20.
Bel Priestley: My beauty has never been a mistake firstly, but if I had to think of one thing, I feel like it's really difficult to find eyebrows that really fit your face. I’ve tried bleached brows. I’ve tried skinny brows. I’ve tried really big bushy brows, which felt like they were just a bit much for me. It’s a brow journey that I’m continuing to explore at the moment.
Taira: My first beauty mistake? Wow. There’s quite a few. Shaving my legs was pretty brutal. Grabbing my mum’s razors and giving it a go did not go well. Lots of garish lipstick shades as well – lavender lipstick was a mistake. Bleaching my hair was a mistake too, that didn’t go well either. I’ve always been off the mindset that you should always just go for it and experiment, try things out. It doesn’t always go well, but it’s part of the fun.
Munya: My first beauty mistake as a teenager was waxing off my eyebrows completely. I used to get the wax strips that you would get for your legs over the eyebrows, straight off. I mean, it was very early 2000s, pencil thin. Looking back now, it’s not good.
Ceval: My first beauty mistake was when I faked tan when I was 13. I only applied fake tan to my face.
Maxine Heron: Black liner as a lip liner. Over the years I found out a dark brown is so much better and it’s much more cohesive. I would say that was my first mistake. Soften it up a bit or just leave it alone.
Adwoa Aboah
“My first big beauty mistake would probably have been overlining my eyebrows, too much black eyeliner, weird blowouts, bad matched foundation.”
“My first act of rebellion was shaving my hair off. God it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was so clouded by not loving my hair, and then also wanting to love it and what that means for a Black woman. It’s just so much deeper, one’s hair, when you’re a Black woman and there were so many things attached to it.”
“It was an act of rebellion and it was an act of me wanting to take those first steps to being confident. It's funny shaving your hair off and being so naked, but it was really that first moment where I was like, ‘I have nothing to hide behind anymore’. I can’t try and assimilate into a way of wearing my hair that doesn't match my personality or my identity. I just have to start fresh.”
Hannah Hampton
“I don't think I had any beauty products until I was about 15, so that might be a big mistake from the get-go if that's one. My first was just mascara because I was like, ‘Oh my God, I've got no eyelashes.’ I didn't have eyebrows probably until I was 16. I didn't know what they were. That was non-existent on all the photos, which was horrendous looking back on now.”
