Cover Greta Lee at the Academy Gala, with make-up done by Nina Park (Photo: Getty Images)
Greta Lee at the Academy Gala, with make-up done by Nina Park (Photo: Getty Images)
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Nina Park, the Chanel makeup artist behind Zoë Kravitz and Greta Lee’s “expensive face” energy, has made her entire method free, public and shockingly simple
Nina Park is having a moment—and she’s not gatekeeping a single second of it.
The Chanel global makeup artist, whose client roster reads like a call sheet for A24’s dream project (Zoë Kravitz, Greta Lee, Lily-Rose Depp), has spent the past year quietly uploading her exact techniques to Instagram and TikTok. No paywalled masterclass. No cryptic “DM for details” here. Just Park demonstrating precisely how she creates that “skin-first” finish the algorithm has collectively labelled “Nina Park Core”. The comments are always the same: “Wait, that’s it?” and “I literally already have all of this.”
Which is precisely the point. Park’s philosophy—and the reason her work photographs like wealth rather than makeup—is that you don’t need new products. You need better technique.
Why this approach is trending right now
Scroll through beauty TikTok and you’ll notice a sharp pivot away from the full-coverage, baked-and-sculpted faces that dominated 2016 all the way till 2019. The pendulum has swung toward something Park has been doing for years: imperceptible edits that enhance rather than erase. Her signature shows up in paparazzi photos where you can't identify a single product, yet the face looks expensive. Kravitz at the Blink Twice premiere. Greta Lee at Cannes. Both unmistakably Park—and both trending because viewers can actually see how to replicate it.
Park made her methods so accessible that thousands of people are now attempting the “halo lip” in their bathrooms and tagging her in the results. And crucially, it doesn’t require you to buy a single thing.
Open your makeup bag right now. You likely have: a foundation or tinted moisturiser, concealer, a nude-brown lip liner, one lipstick in a muted tone, bronzer, and a brow product. That’s the entire toolkit. The shift isn’t in what you own—it’s in how Park insists you use it. And she’s posted the receipts.
We break down the precise techniques required to master her ‘lit-from-within’ look without making a single new purchase.
Step one: the 5-minute massage (not primer)
Park begins every application the same way, and she's demonstrated it dozens of times on her feed: a manual facial massage to create what she calls gwang—the Korean term for genuine luminosity that comes from circulation, not highlighter.
The technique: Spend three to five minutes massaging your face. Firm upward strokes along the jawline. Gentle pressure circling the orbital bone. Deliberate movements at the temples. This isn't spa theatre—it's about flooding your skin with blood flow so your base has something radiant to work with. Park is religious about this step and emphasises it in nearly every tutorial. Let your skin settle for a minute before moving forward.
When your moisturiser is massaged in rather than patted on, your foundation isn’t sitting atop a slippery film—it’s melting into genuinely plump, prepared skin.
Step two: pinpoint concealing, then sheer everything out
Park’s base application looks almost criminal in how little product she uses. She’s shown this exact method on Kravitz’s face, on her own face, and on countless editorial shoots.
The technique: concealer goes only where you need genuine correction—under-eye darkness, redness at the nostrils, the occasional spot. Then take your foundation, thin it with a single drop of facial oil or serum on the back of your hand, and press it only into areas where your skin tone is uneven. Blend with fingertips, no need for a sponge. The warmth of your hands melts product into skin instead of layering it on top.
Park’s philosophy, which she’s stated explicitly in interviews, is that your pores should remain visible up close. If they’re not, you’ve applied too much. The goal is an “invisible” base that holds up in real life but reads as your skin, slightly perfected.
Above Nina Park was the make-up artist behind Zoe Kravitz’s look at the 2025 Academy Museum Gala at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Photo: Getty Images)
Nina Park was the make-up artist behind Zoe Kravitz’s look at the 2025 Academy Museum Gala at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Photo: Getty Images)
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Step three: the halo lip (this is the one everyone’s trying)
This technique has gone genuinely viral—search “Nina Park lip combo” and you'll find thousands of attempts. Park has posted step-by-step videos of this exact method, and it’s deceptively simple.
The technique: take any nude-brown lip liner—or one shade deeper than your natural lip colour—and overline by just a millimetre. Trace slightly outside your lip line, focusing on the cupid's bow and the centre of the lower lip. Here’s the critical part: before you apply any lipstick, take a cotton bud or your ring finger and smudge that liner outward, diffusing it into a soft shadow around the perimeter of your mouth. It should look like a subtle bruise, barely there. Only then do you press your lip colour—a muted rose, brick, or berry—into the centre of your lips. Don’t drag it to the edges. Let that shadowy halo remain.
The dimensional quality this creates can’t be replicated with a single lipstick. It mimics the way lips naturally have variation in tone—darker at the edges, brighter in the centre.
Step four: bronzer as eyeshadow, brows that move
Park rarely uses traditional eyeshadow, and she's been open about this in her tutorials. Instead, she sweeps the same bronzer she uses on the face across the eyelid for a monochromatic wash.
The technique: use a fluffy brush to deposit bronzer across the mobile lid and blend into the crease with your finger. For brows, brush hairs upward with a spoolie, then use the smallest amount of brow gel—or skip it entirely if your hair holds shape naturally. Park's brows on clients are always feathered, never laminated.
The “Nina Park Core” trending across your feed is proof that when you stop trying to mask your face and start editing it with intention, the result is always more compelling than a full beat done without proper techniques.
You don’t need to buy anything. You just need to try it. This weekend, before your next dinner out, spend those five minutes on the massage. Blur that lip line. Use your bronzer differently. Park’s already shown you how. The only question is whether you’ll trust the method enough to try it.
Andrea Saadan is the Senior Digital Editor of Tatler Singapore. She oversees all digital content for the website and currently leads the Beauty and Lifestyle verticals. As a child, she had always enjoyed reading and writing but it was only after she joined her college newspaper, The Spectrum, in Buffalo, New York, that she considered a career in journalism. Her love for all things beauty started from the age of two—when she was caught playing with (and damaging) her mother’s YSL lipstick. On top of her day job, she is also an unpaid beauty consultant for friends and family. Besides make-up, her obsessions include the wizarding world of Harry Potter, podcasts, ice-cream, her walking pad and watching endless re-runs of The Office (US).
