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Perhaps you could trace it back to 10 years ago, when Kylie Jenner launched her infamous Lip Kits. At the time, Jenner was 18 and set the beauty world aflame with her brand’s introduction of three Lip Kits, each made up of a lip liner and a liquid lipstick. Jenner herself had filled lips — the popular look was matte and plump.
But the look also harkens back to Black artists, often in the R&B space, like Aaliyah, Mary J. Blige and Lil Kim, who wore this lip look in the ’90s, often with a darker lip liner providing contrast. Jenner may have introduced the look to a new generation and demographic, but she didn’t invent it.
Now, a decade later, yet another new generation is buying in.
Lip liner has, concurrently, had a major resurgence, and the trend has now been dubbed by TikTokers as “lip combos.” According to data from the market research company Spate, across Google and TikTok, searches for the lip combo have increased by 97.5% from April 2025 to March 2025, compared to the same period last year. TikTok owns 99.9% of the “Popularity Share,” a Spate metric attributing the source of a trend’s popularity.
“As the trend has grown, it has evolved beyond lip liner and [lip] color to include multiple steps and products,” said Addison Cain, senior insights and marketing lead at Spate. “Many recent videos even have a wait step, allowing one product to dry while completing other parts of their routine.”
Cain pointed to a popular post from April 14 with 4 million views — the creator uses four products, starting with the beauty brand Sacheu’s lip liner. In addition, she noted that creator @glambyaddie shows the variety the trend offers through a content series called Random Lip of the Day with My Eyes Closed, which has 50 million views.
According to data provided by Circana, lip liner sales have seen significant and steady growth over the past three years, increasing 60% from 2022-2024, from $138.9 million to $223 million. Since the start of 2025, the category has already experienced 25% growth.
On TikTok, users document their favorite lip combos, dedicating themselves to experimenting with liners, glosses, oils, balms and sticks to get the best look. Part of the fun lies in the fact that there are literally an endless number of ways to do it: A user can go minimalist, taking a your-lips-but-better approach, or maximalist, over-lining their lips or topping the look off with something glittery.
According to Spate data, the brands leading the trend on TikTok include NYX Professional Makeup, Sacheu Beauty, L’Oréal Paris and E.l.f. Cosmetics. In addition, Make Up For Ever’s hero Artist Color Pencil franchise achieved triple-digit sales growth year-over-year and double-digit growth in social mentions year-over-year in 2024 versus 2023. In late January, the brand debuted its Moisturizing & Plumping Lip Gloss ($26), some shades of which correspond to its most popular liner shades. Likewise, Rhode debuted its Peptide Lip Shape at the end of January, making for easy pairing with its hero Peptide Lip Treatment.
On TikTok, #sacheubeauty is the top-viewed branded hashtag alongside the trend, with 5 million average weekly views. In a May 2024 post with 14.5 million views, creator Brianna Petruzzi (137,000 followers) demonstrates her favorite lip combo, silently, to music. She uses one of Sacheu’s hero Lip Liner Stay-Ns, which sell for $12. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that these stains have gone viral, given the strong visual experience of applying them. They go on the lips super dark, then users then physically peel them off, revealing a lighter, long-wearing stain. Petruzzi then applies a Charlotte Tilbury lip liner and follows with one of NYX’s popular Fat Oils.
Of the success of the Stay-Ns, Sacheu CEO and co-founder Quinn Roukema said, “We saw a clear white space for long-wear makeup [concurrent with] a huge decline in lipstick usage. Lipstick sales were down for a couple of years back-to-back. … There’s a clear movement in a market where people were getting tired of having to reapply.” The product has also received multiple major organic boosts, including being featured in a December 2024 post in which Billie Eilish featured her pre-show makeup routine. Alix Earle also used it in a January post. Roukema noted that the brand has over 180,000 affiliate partners on TikTok who promote the product on TikTok Shop — and yet, Ulta Beauty remains the brand’s No. 1 sales channel. It has sold over 10 million units of the hero SKU, Roukema said.
Jessica Lo, Make Up For Ever’s vp of communications and integrated marketing, traces the current popularity of the lip combo to “creativity.” Make Up For Ever takes an “always on” approach, making sure creators are stocked with its products to keep in mind and have on hand when creating their own lip combos, she said. In a paid capacity, Make Up For Ever has worked with mega-influencers such as The Lipstick Lesbians (1.1 million TikTok followers) and Olympic gymnast Suni Lee (3.6 million TikTok followers).
According to data reported by NielsenIQ, NYX Professional Makeup is the No. 1 in mass for the category. It has over 120 shades of lip liner across its various SKUs. “[Lip is such a] trend-driven category, it’s about keeping those beauty enthusiasts, those lip-lovers, really interested and constantly engaged,” said Yasmin Dastmalchi, USA gm at NYX Professional Makeup. As such, NYX has regularly been adding new innovations to its lip pipeline. New launches include its Lip IV Hydrating Gloss Stain ($12) and its just-launched Smushy Matte Lip Balm ($9), as the brand aims to offer a texture and color for every preference. Already, Dastmalchi said, the brand is seeing people layer its new launches with one another.
In the past week, creator Chenoa Brookins (266,000 TikTok followers) has received the most views and likes alongside the lip combo trend, per Spate. Brookins is a fan of the aforementioned peel-off lip products, like Sacheu’s and Wonderskin’s. These lip stains, she said, drive the most clicks and visits to her LTK, where she earns affiliate commission. Her April 20 YouTube Shorts post featuring Sacheu’s Stay-N and a Lawless lip gloss recently went viral, racking up 20 million views.
Of lip combos, Brookins said, “It’s really fun to be creative. You don’t have to have a full face of makeup or full glam. … You can mix and match, change [up the products you use] and do whatever you want. You’re able to express yourself that way.” Brookins has worked with brands including Kylie Cosmetics, RMS and Soshe Beauty on lip combo-related content in a paid capacity. Of the viral Shorts post, she said, “It definitely makes me feel like maybe I need to dial this in, or maybe even do more chitchat, where I talk about what I’m doing a little bit more, rather than just applying [the combo] to a trending sound.”
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