It’s not a phase, mom... No, really, it isn't.
You might think the emo music that ravaged millennials' earbuds in the 2000s— such as Taking Back Sunday's "Cute Without the 'E'" or "Ohio Is For Lovers" by Hawthorne Heights—was born and died within the same decade, but perhaps you just stopped listening. Some of us didn’t. Now it's 2025, and it appears the genre and its accompanying doom-and-gloom beauty aesthetic has made a full-blown comeback. But the hill I choose to die on is that emo (the music, the look, all of it) never actually went away.
With the 2000s rounding back into relevancy (yes, trends are, in fact, cyclical) the staple emo side parts and chunky colorful streaks first popularized by Myspace models such as Hanna Beth and Audrey Kitching have been reinvented on runways and red carpets over the past couple of years, and moody black eyeliner has reinstated its staple status in those places, too, albeit in a far more subtle fashion.
It makes sense that these emo-adjacent hair and makeup looks happen to be popular again when you consider how much the music genre is thriving right now. Paramore, My Chemical Romance, and Fall Out Boy (what many fans argue is the true “Emo Holy Trinity”) have all performed multiple sold-out stadium tours in recent years after making triumphant returns from indefinite hiatuses. A slew of other defunct emo bands—including The Academy Is…, Motion City Soundtrack, Say Anything, and Panic! At the Disco—have reunited or have plans to reunite in 2025, either to release new music or to put on special live performances of their most beloved works. The 2023 revival of the emo-focused When We Were Young Music Festival, which is still going strong, now offers those bands a perfect place to do that among the genre's most devoted fans.
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The first time emo made its go-round in mainstream pop culture, I called everyone a poser out of protectiveness of the genre (and, you know, being 13). Now, it just fills me with nostalgic glee and a much-needed feeling of connection. Even now in my early 30s, the mere mention of any of these bands still makes me foam at the mouth—Fall Out Boy more than any other. I have no shame in loving a band that titles its songs with angsty full sentences like "I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth" because laughing, crying, and shouting along to their lyrics molded me into the person I am. Until they released From Under the Cork Tree, the 2005 album that catapulted them to stardom, I was nothing but a pre-teen with lots of pent-up rage and no idea of who I was or what I liked independent of other people. If you think it sounds dramatic, go ahead and think that; drama is what emo's all about, after all. Ask any 20-something on the street wearing checkered slip-on Vans and they'll likely tell you the same.
I certainly had the band tees, studded belts, and skinny jeans, but that wasn't emo's greatest influence on me. Before beauty YouTubers dominated the Internet, my primary sources of #inspo were Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz's perpetually smudged black "guyliner," the intricate face paintings of Panic! At the Disco guitarist Ryan Ross, and My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way's signature wash of rusty red eye shadow. I'd tear their pictures from magazine pages and study their faces for hours. That was mostly because they were—gasp!—cute boys, but I was also endlessly fascinated by the idea of men unashamedly wearing edgy makeup looks I had previously never even thought to attempt. At that point in pop culture, the glitter-clad glam-rock icons like David Bowie, Prince, and KISS seemed like mere relics of a time gone by, and the men I saw on screen often donned the same hyper-masculine California-prep uniform (The O.C., The Hills, etc.). Emo makeup at that time wasn't just defiant to me; it was a sign of bravery. And as an awkward tween who'd just moved to a new city where she had no friends, I wanted nothing more at that time than to feel brave.
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Dudes in emo bands shattered the floodgates for my interest in makeup. Before I knew it, the single black kohl pencil in my bathroom (which I had “borrowed” from my goth older sister) had turned into a full collection of eyeliners and eye shadows, including a yellow Covergirl eye shadow I bought specifically to emulate a look worn once or twice by Panic! At the Disco's Brendon Urie. Even as the 2000s melted into the 2020s and the emo look became a faux pas, I refused to part with my bold black eye makeup. I traded smudged lashlines for sharp cat-eyes, which I wore any time I left the house in high school, college, and throughout my young adulthood.
This (very embarrassing) photo must've been taken around 2007 when I was 13, just before my makeup obsession took hold and I went full emo. I'm wearing the tightest skinny jeans known to man (peep those green JVC Gummy headphones in the pocket, oh my god) and a limited-edition T-shirt from Pete Wentz's highly coveted collaboration with DKNY. Yeah, I was that person.
Nicola Dall'AsenFast-forward to now, and I’ve still got entire drawers dedicated to black eyeliner and listen to songs from From Under the Cork Tree every single day. What's evolved is that my interest in makeup has grown to the point that I now have an editorial career almost entirely dedicated to it.
And that’s a career I might not have without emo's influence on my hair as well. Like any emo or scene kid worth their salt in 2008, I had the deepest of all side parts, the eye-shrouding side bangs to match, and, most notably, poorly box-dyed red hair. I was inspired by Williams's vibrant orange and yellow fauxhawk from the “Misery Business” music video and bought the closest color dye I could find at the time: a rusty burgundy. My hair, of course, came out looking nothing like hers, given that I didn't know vibrant colors didn't work the same on dark hair and couldn't find a consumer-ready dye even remotely close to the right shade of orange. That was the first time I had ever dyed my own hair, and from that point onward, my bathroom and bedsheets remained perpetually stained by vibrant dyes (sorry, mom), more often than not in colors similar to those worn by Williams. For years, I tirelessly researched (without Google or ChatGPT, mind you) how to make my hair look more like hers—and how to take better care of my hair in the process—and eventually succeeded, fueling my love for hair dye and hair care even more.
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Getty Images
Getty Images
It started with boxed burgundies, auburns, and blacks (to veil mistakes I'd made with other dyes) that I bought while grocery shopping with my mom. Once I got my driver's license, that evolved to weekly trips to Sally Beauty, where I'd stockpile on lightening powders, developers, and semi-permanent dyes from Manic Panic that I'd use to turn my hair blonde, turquoise, lavender, silver, pink, green, or any other color that happened to tickle my fancy that month. After experimenting so much on myself, I eventually became somewhat of an amateur colorist for my friends who couldn't afford salons in my young adulthood, another facet of knowledge that contributed to my becoming a beauty journalist.
My inclination toward brightly colored hair never faltered; most recently, a couple years back, I dyed my hair vivid copper-orange courtesy of (you guessed it) Hayley Williams and Good Dye Young, the hair color brand she cofounded with colorist Brian O’Connor in 2016. The brand carries a range of temporary and semi-permanent dyes, several of which I've tested, that are mostly modeled after colors Williams has worn in the past. Since then, I've been waiting patiently—painfully so—for my virgin hair to grow back out so I can safely bleach my hair and experiment with some of the brand's newer colors.
Nicola Dall'Asen
Nicola Dall'Asen
Nicola Dall'Asen
Emo has had a decades-long impact on entire generations, and those who call emo just another beauty trend are overlooking this. The genre's penchant for somber lyrics set to vibrant theatrics remains reflected in the hair and makeup tastes of those it hit deepest the first time around. I know this because I am one of those people.
My closest friends, the people I interact with online, the people I encounter at concerts for bands that wouldn't exist were it not for mid-2000s emo—we're all a mixing bowl of edgy hair and piercings and skinny jeans we have yet to feel too old for. We are all very much alive, and so is the emo lifestyle that never died. When our knees and backs start aching halfway through a sold-out My Chemical Romance arena show, maybe, just maybe, we will change. But even if we do, it won't diminish the fact that this music and aesthetic of our lives was never a trend or, as the cliché goes, a phase. Emo is an unapologetic reflection of who we are.
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