“I could give everything up except for blush.” One might expect such a line—absolutist, romantic at heart—to come from the fictionalized Catherine II at the center of The Great, Hulu’s gleeful romp starring Elle Fanning, back May 12 for season three. But it is a pure sentiment from the actor herself, smiling beatifically from a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Fanning has a soft spot for powder formulas, she explains—easier to pile on, as is her off-camera wont. But The Great is where her blush comes fully into bloom. “Sometimes it is a bit overdone, but on purpose because it’s kind of a comedic beat,” says Erin Ayanian Monroe, Fanning’s makeup designer on the show. A naturalistic flush signals joy; extended down to the bust, it accompanies the campy sex scenes. For an empress who calls herself a “delusional optimist”—a one-percenter juggling love and authority—the profusion of color across her visage speaks volumes. “She’s uncontained,” Ayanian Monroe says.

Elle Fanning as Catherine in The Great.

If blush is a stand-in for youth and titillation, naturally it lights up TikTok algorithms. “Hot girl” tutorials demonstrate the merits of a W-shaped application (to mimic a sunburn) or the aura-like effect achieved by layering different tones of liquid blush. Melt-into-skin versions by Tower 28, Charlotte Tilbury, and Jones Road reflect an approachable ease, while next-gen powders (Haus Labs by Lady Gaga, Hermès) tweak a classic. Still, the fall 2023 runways offered little color on cheeks, as if foretelling a period of angst and economic austerity. At Gucci, for one, global makeup artist Thomas de Kluyver instead used blush across some models’ eyes: a red-rimmed look more raw than romantic.

Such a mood makes Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story—a prequel about the rouged monarch, debuting May 4 on Netflix ahead of England’s real-life coronation—register as peak escapist fantasy. “Blush is something we use when we’re feeling more extravagant, more frivolous,” says the show’s hair and makeup department head Nic Collins, seeing a decadence in 18th-century royal life (when color centered on the apple of the cheek) and in the high-flying 1980s (when blush swept into the hairline). Of course, what sets the Bridgerton court apart from other palace tableaux is the diversity of those in power—and wider representation translates to a broader palette of blush. “Blackberry, cherry, a beetroot color, rose,” Collins says of the cream formulas (by Fenty and Bobbi Brown, among others) used to perk up an array of complexions. “You’re looking for that depth of pigment.”

India Amarteifio as the young monarch in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.

Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, who named her two-year-old makeup line, Ami Colé, after her Senegalese mother, homed in on that pigment load when creating her four Desert Date cream multisticks, with shades like Spice (a blue-toned raisin) and Flame (red that reads beautifully on darker skin). “Because of the melanin,” she says, “we don’t ‘blush’—so how do we show up emotionally, but through makeup?” N’Diaye-Mbaye views her brand as soft armor; a grin on the packaging adds levity, even in uncertain times. “We are the meme where the dog is smiling and there’s a fire in the background,” she says, upbeat. “That’s our way of protecting ourselves and keeping things ‘delusionally optimistic.’”