It’s not your imagination. Donald Trump is less orange
It’s not your imagination. Donald Trump is less orange
To look more presidential, former President Trump is toning down the ‘tan.’
BY Mark Wilson
Trump’s unmistakable look is born from a kit of parts: His swooping hair. His red tie and blue suit. His frequent MAGA hat. But one quirk stands out above the rest. It’s a distraction at best, and a punchline at worst.
His unnaturally orange hue.
His skin has been various shades of orange since at least The Apprentice, peaking in its saturation in 2020. But has anyone else noticed . . . he’s been less orange lately? From his 2023 Town Hall on CNN to his 2024 debate with Biden to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump’s skin has never looked more natural.
In fact, four separate experts in political image consulting and makeup, interviewed by Fast Company, have observed the same evolution. Studying images from the past decade of Trump appearances, experts agree that, while his makeup is often inconsistent, the orange tint appears to have peaked in 2020, and has been generally toned down leading up to the 2024 election. (Fast Company reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but have not heard back.)
Several experts pointed out that he actually looks more like Biden than he used to, embracing a more stately visage to counter the refrain of a “reality show president.” And they all agree, it works in his favor.
“Because he’s 78 years old, he just needs to show up being authentic. His experience and wisdom should be demonstrating confidence in himself,” says image consultant and celebrity stylist Edith Chan. “His character is very bold, so why not offer the public a new thing to not get bored with another four years of him?”
Where does all the orange come from?
Of course, Trump didn’t always look so orange. In early photos, when Trump was a mere real estate mogul, he had the pallor of his Scottish and German heritage. It’s not until 2012, with The Apprentice, that he started wearing makeup regularly for TV and related appearances. By 2015, when he became a serious presidential candidate and was viewed by Americans with a more critical eye, he quickly became synonymous with orange. (We published Trump’s Pantone number, while Mother Jones went so far as to investigate what spray tan brand might be the source of his hue.)
While Trump’s execution has been flawed, he has probably embraced this unnatural hue out of the quest to look healthier and younger, experts speculate.
“Tone it or tan it, that’s what personal trainers say,” notes image consultant Julie Rath. The problem, of course, is that the “tan” has been so synthetic. “That orange tone wasn’t a natural color for a caucasian man,” she adds.
In turn, news analysis has guessed the source of Trump’s orange face for some time—and even the experts I talked to for this piece offered theories: Was it bronzer? Tanning pills? Makeup atop an actual tan? A means to cover rosacea? How much is coming from the makeup artist, and how much is coming from Trump himself?
Kriss Blevens, a makeup artist who has made up every president since Jimmy Carter, offers some clarity.
“Because I have done Trump’s makeup several times, I can tell you that, at times, his face looked bronzer than the rest of him, and that was before makeup,” she says. “My guess was he relied on some self-tanners to try to maintain a certain look that he’d come to feel healthy in from living in Florida.” She believes Trump’s context of living in the state has trained his eye, and even seeing himself in the mirror with so much color had skewed his own objectivity.
Blevens’s most recent work with Trump was for his 2023 town hall on CNN—which was one of the earliest moments we see of Trump’s visual turnaround. When he sat down in the chair, Blevens said the two already had some rapport.
“I wanted to neutralize the bronze look, then touch up around the eye area just so it was even in tone,” she says. She asked for Trump’s hands to apply bronzer, and when Trump asked why, she said it was because he talked with his hands and they weren’t as dark as his face.
Then, with the makeup near done, he asked for more pigment on his face.
“He will look and go, ‘Do I need more color?’ And I say, ‘No, you don’t, trust me,’” says Blevens. “I had a word with him, and I’m very diplomatic about it. Owning my power as an artist in the face of power, like a person in power like that—it takes a whole career to even be able to do that. And most don’t.”
Blevens recalled a similar tricky conversation back in 2007, when she made up Hillary Clinton for her first Democratic presidential candidates debate.
“Her assistant handed me this orangey-red lipstick. I looked at the lipstick and actually had a gut-punch reaction. And I said to her assistant, ‘I’m not feeling it. I’d turn that lip color down,’” recalls Blevens. “Then Hillary Clinton looked at me and said, ‘Then do what you feel.’”
Why politicians turn to makeup
Trump is hardly the only politician to embrace makeup. Politicians across the political and gender spectrum use it to some extent, especially when broadcast cameras are involved.
“Every person we see on screen in a movie or on TV, male or female, is going to have something on their face; especially with super-high-def TVs, every little blemish or line is emphasized,” says Rath. The core goal is not just flattery, but authenticity and consistency—the latter of which is particularly important for female politicians who often face more scrutiny regarding their appearance.
“There’s something about a signature look and sticking to it—find that consistency so nobody talks about it,” says Blevens. “It’s when you have one lip color on one day and one lip color another day, [that creates distraction].”
But the campaign trail is anything but consistent. Exactly how that makeup is applied is an art that responds to all sorts of ever-changing factors. Studio lighting can range in color temperature and brightness. The color of an outfit can change the calculus of the color on someone’s face. Even phone and TV screens toss in another layer of variance to what the viewer will see. It’s a constant battle of warm and cool tones, and experts rely upon a deep understanding of color theory.
Touring across media appearances, very few politicians actually bring their own beauty team with them (and most who do are women, Blevens says). As such, Blevens actually teaches courses for politicians to do their own makeup, which is often the most feasible solution. Otherwise, politicians are at the mercy of freelance makeup artists when they sit down in the chair who are, frankly, of varying levels of skill.
This unpredictability is a reason Donald Trump’s own makeup has had so much variance across the past decade, even now. (Some experts speculated that there are times he may have actually been doing it himself—though that hardly accounts for broadcast variances.) Sometimes, his face is not blended with his neck or ears, and his eyes can become what Chan calls “googly eyes,” with notable white outlines.
Trump’s wardrobe—specifically the omnipresent blue jacket—complements the orange of his face, maximizing the color like a ‘90s Hollywood movie poster. But a crisp white shirt can mirror the white around his eyes, exacerbating it. “Because it was so orange, the whites under his eyes were so white . . . the white shirt popped the white under his eyes more and made the orange more intense,” says Rath.
Trump’s glow-down
While he’s older now, Trump today often looks better than he has in years. His hair has faded to a natural and neutral silver, which experts agree gives him a more stately look more in line with President Biden, and eliminates some of the color clash between his hair, face, and bright red tie.
“By embracing the cool, vibrant tones in his makeup and wardrobe, he has created a more energetic, serious, and powerful image—just what we’d expect from a world leader,” says Chan. “It’s pretty clear that he wanted to shake off his TV personality days to project a new fresh presidential vibe.”
Two experts speculated that this similarity between Trump and our sitting president is more than a coincidence, and part of a new image plan.
“There’s always a story. There’s always a strategy,” says image coach Lauren A. Rothman. “Right now, you’re going to have Biden [out of the race]. Maybe Trump is going to do less orange to try to get a little bit of that audience.”
That argument certainly seemed convincing, until late August, when Trump showed up to a border wall appearance in Arizona with a splotchy wash of brown across his face, unblended with his ears. (Looking at comparison images across Getty, however, he’s less cringe than it may appear on social media—though certainly pushing tan to its limits.) For his debate with Harris on September 10, it will be interesting to watch whether we get Trump as silver fox or Trump as citrus fruit.
Meanwhile, the Kamala Harris campaign has been notably selective in how it’s presented Trump in political ads. Rather than highlighting him as orange, they’ve chosen photos where he actually looks quite pale, with skin so washed out that he looks malnourished, even vampiric. With Biden out of the race, Democrats seem keen to remind the public: Trump’s “tan” cannot erase the fact that he is old.
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