Bakeup Isn’t Just for the Metaverse—It’s for the Mirror in Your Mind

The pigment looks unreal—on purpose. Swirls of chrome, prismatic violets, textures that shimmer like heat distortion. It’s not trying to blend in. It’s trying to bend reality.

Bakeup is makeup, yes. But only if you believe makeup has always been about more than skin. Co-founded by beauty alchemist Jo Baker and digital provocateur Grace Gaustad, the brand doesn’t just court the metaverse—it seduces it. With filters that look like interstellar tears and products that blur the line between IRL and AR, Bakeup is asking a different question: What if beauty isn’t something you apply, but something you broadcast?

The Future Is Wearable—but Is It Touchable?

In an exclusive interview, Gaustad puts it plainly: “We wanted to create makeup that exists where you do—which is everywhere now. Online, offline, emotional, imagined.” There’s a soft radicalism in that. Bakeup isn’t just launching products; it’s launching portals—tools for reimagining how we show up in worlds both digital and physical.

Some of their most buzzed-about items? A set of AR filters that let you “wear” makeup through your phone’s camera, no application needed. A shimmer balm that reacts to light like a screen does. It’s the kind of beauty that doesn’t ask for approval. It just is.

Critics will say it’s gimmicky. Or worse—disconnected. But maybe that’s because we still cling to the idea that “real” means tangible. Bakeup challenges that. It treats beauty as an avatar of emotion, mood, code.

What Happens When Makeup Isn’t for Touch—but for Transmission?

The metaverse angle is obvious—but the heart of Bakeup is quieter, stranger. It’s not just about virtual selves. It’s about the permission to be plural. One moment you’re alien-bride surrealism, the next you’re bare-skinned softness—both versions equally true.

Jo Baker, the makeup artist behind the brand’s DNA, calls this “emotional layering.” And that’s what it feels like: a tech-infused ritual of self-making. A new language for the in-between spaces we now inhabit—where Zoom screens, camera filters, and digital skins become as vital to identity as perfume or posture once were.

So maybe Bakeup isn’t makeup in the traditional sense. Maybe it’s a mirror for the self you haven’t met yet.