This year when the fall runway models appeared (for the most part) with fresh glowing faces, their natural look seemed inevitable. Drop-dead glamour is an anachronism in the gender-free office. Plus, no one has the time to painstakingly paint a face: we want makeup we can apply in the back seat of a cab. In response, the beauty industry has come up with easy-to-use colors and forms. Foundations are so light they're almost moisturizers with sunscreen. (For the latest offerings, see Givenchy Teint Minimal or Neutrogena Healthy Skin Liquid Makeup.) Even Trish McEvoy, the makeup artist who specializes in providing a brush for every corner of the face, has come out with Face Shine, a transparent cream blush you rub on with a finger. At Estee Lauder you can still get lipstick in a case like a fluted gold column, but you can also pick up a double-ended chunky pencil with a deeper color and a complementing frost (Duo Lipstick).

Bobbi Brown, who pioneered the natural look with her own makeup line, says that although a woman might occasionally experiment with a dark lip or shimmery eye for evening, "natural will never be over. Makeup will never go strong again."

The human brain may be wired to expect things to continue as is, but history, according to Hegel, demonstrates that like a school of fish, we can suddenly find ourselves swimming in the opposite direction. Even as we seem firmly committed to natural, somewhere an itch toward artifice could be building. And perhaps it is starting with Gwen Stefani, whose ninja kewpie-doll look in her latest video, "New," has makeup freaks swooning.

For 12 years, ever since her older brother, Eric, recruited her at 17 to sing with his band, No Doubt, she has been inventing a look that's glamorous but approachable, girlie yet athletic, female and powerful. It is ever-changing but even at its most innocent-seeming it is never natural. Just as No Doubt's music borrows from Jamaican reggae by way of London and Southern California, as well as from punk and heavy metal, Stefani has been rummaging through history and cultures to find ways of projecting femininity.

The platinum hair, pencil brows and lacquer lips come from Stefani's obsession, she tells me, with starlets of the 20's and 30's. For a while there was the blue hair and the bindi thing -- jewels pasted on the forehead. Stefani is also known for coupling highly stylized makeup with an athletic freedom of dress for her aerobic performances. In the early days she sewed her own costumes, including "cartoon dresses in Disney colors." Then she discovered that baggy pants work for her because "I can run around onstage and no one can see my behind." Wearing pants makes her feel more powerful. A dress, she says, can make her look "like a piece of candy. ... I want to go off and not really be a guy or a girl."

Is Stefani a trailblazer, or is she an anomaly, a circus performer on the fringe of society? She may seem irrelevant to the 33-year-old bond trader, but hordes of pubescent girls are drinking in her message. (Stefani reports the weird sensation of surveying an audience and seeing last month's look looking back at her.)