Lady Gaga goes Tilda Swinton.

Chuck out all your make-up! Even Lady Gaga has gone all Tilda Swinton on us!

The new cover of Harper's Bazaar shows Lady Gaga with no make-up, hair plain. The new minimalism. It's not a fresh and peachy just-off-the-beach baring all. Rather the white-eyebrow, white-hair, no-eyelash austerity of actress Tilda Swinton. A look that goes further than natural, it's less than zero, a dramatic and daring absence of colour.

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Bugger it! Just as I'd mastered the dark tapered eyebrow, just as I'd hunted down a place that does the deepest of spray tans, just as I'd bought a whole bunch of that gunk that darkens and lengthens your eyelashes. Bloody hell. Always that one step behind...

Tilda Swinton famously wears the most severe couture, often without even a hint of lippy and her hair slicked back. She is the antithesis of someone who cares what's cute.

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Is Lady Gaga reflecting our on--the-edge-of-a-depression time? Is bare-faced the equivalent of long hemlines heralding a seriously sad economy. Whatever the sub-conscious motivation, the Tilda Swinton look has been adopted by many. Prada's latest campaign shows this same absence of make-up as does Armani and Honor Fraser for Zara. Louis Vuitton adverts in the New York Times this weekend showed pale, pale faces with just a stagey scrap of eyeliner.

In keeping with this bleakness, no wonder Jane Eyre's foggy wanderings on the moor have been so popular in the cinemas.

Or maybe it's not a negative -  no colour equals sombre -  but rather a positive. Having confidence - just as you are - to face the world - just as it is. Just as Tilda Swinton has the chutzpah to: lie in a case in an art show; have a husband, twins and a lover and make it work; and wear metallic baby-poop gold without a hint of blush or mascara.

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I'm choosing to do it the old-fashioned way; with curled, dyed eyelashes, a brush of blush and a dash of pink lippy. Now that's daring.