EXPERIMENT: Kathryn Bernardo, Julia Barretto, and Liza Soberano in Korean Baby Face Makeup Style

This post was inspired by Korean Star TV’s Youtube video (watch here) showing Koreans giving feedback on Pinoy stars’ looks. While majority of the opinion makers found Liza Soberano the most beautiful (according to their Korean beauty standards), some of them mentioned Kathryn Bernardo and Julia Barretto as well. Here are some comments struck us:

Korean Style Makeup Julia Barretto Kathryn Bernardo Liza Soberano Most Beautiful 2 — There is a striking difference between makeup styles applied in Philippine and Korean showbiz. 🙂 The latter has a growing preference for an au naturel look which they call “baby face.” Natural-looking makeup tends to make anyone look younger. 🙂

Korean Style Makeup Julia Barretto Kathryn Bernardo Liza Soberano Most Beautiful 3 — Since our current makeup style in the Philippines seems to be largely patterned after the US, Koreans who are used to their babyface makeup style feel our stars look older than their actual age. 🙂

What is Korean Baby Face makeup style?

Based on the numerous Korean-inspired makeup tutorials I’ve seen, I learned that Koreans are so into the baby face makeup or makeup that makes one look younger. Some notable aspects of baby face makeup are having a dewy skin look (a perfect balance between matte and shiny), wearing subtle pinkish or peachy blush that just gives one a healthy glow, using light and natural-looking lipstick shades, and most importantly, having straight and often thick eyebrows.

If you will notice, we have it differently here in the Philippines. A lot of our celebrity makeup artists are big on arched eyebrows, smoky eyes, heavy contouring of the face (remember the Kim Kardashian contouring craze?), and minimal highlighting. The dewy look is often used for bridal makeup but many brides these days actually opt to have their makeup matte. Wearing the dewy look poses a risk of appearing oily if not properly executed. 🙂

We also wonder how their looks will change with the Korean makeup style so we retouched some of the subjects’ photos (with all due respect to the owners of the original ones) for the purpose of visual reference. Before we show you our attempt at giving the three girls (Kathryn, Liza, and Julia) a digital makeover, here’s a comparison of the Korean and Philippine styles in makeup application.

Korean Style Makeup Julia Barretto Kathryn Bernardo Liza Soberano Most Beautiful Bianca Gonzalez Ellen Adarna Sarah Geronimo makeup — Ellen Adarna, Bianca Gonzalez, Sarah Geronimo (Sources: Albert Kurniawan, RB Chanco, and Juan Sarte on Instagram)

Here’s our random experiment if we changed Kathryn’s, Julia’s, and Liza’s makeup styles based on Korean standards. Here are our digital makeovers. (Disclaimer: We do not claim ownership of the photos used below.)

JULIA BARRETTO

KATHRYN BERNARDO

LIZA SOBERANO

Aside from her really pretty face without makeup, the makeup style used on her was the closest to their makeup style. No wonder almost every Korean participant raved about her. 🙂