RSSArchive for June 2009
Makeup Palette Adjustment
June 30, 2009
Taji asked recently when we would see the photos of how PCA has changed my look. I haven’t had the time but I will soon.
In the meantime, you can see the difference in the makeup palettes I’m using these days. I’m amazed myself to see the two side-by-side. The right colours feel so natural that people tend to look at their old colours as someone they used to be. The change is as much internal as external.
Makeup Model : Clear Spring
June 28, 2009
This is the yellow undertone of Spring moving closer to the neutral line till it flips to its sister season of Clear Winter. Sometimes, the hair is so dark with very brown eyes that the person is mistakenly classifyied with the high contrast of Winters. Clear Spring is the only season outside of Winter that can pull off black clothing.
Read moreClear and Soft Colours
June 24, 2009
I was asked a great question. Of course, the only question that is not great is the one left unasked.
The person said “What is a clear color?”
Excellent. As with most things about color, there is no understanding without seeing.
Read morePersonal Colour Analysis (PCA) Q&A
June 20, 2009
There have been a lot of questions about the PCA process. I’m very happy about it. I’ve tried to adress them in an FAQ page. You can reach it from the link in the lower horizontal navigation bar (lighter grey one) just below the header picture, at the PCA FAQs tab.
Anything I’ve missed?
Read moreMakeup Model : Clear Winter
June 16, 2009
I get a lot of emails from women who know they’re Winter but don’t know which one. Good on them to know that there are 3 versions of each season. The Clear Winter (Sci\ART’s Bright Winter) is the bridge to Spring. That means that it still respects the deep, clear, dark colors of all Winters, and is predominantly cool, but it is just slightly warmed by yellow.
Read moreProduct Review : Clinique Repairwear SPF 15 Foundation
June 12, 2009
I wasn’t planning on buying foundation but I got overheated with the excitement of finding this color and formulation. And I’m still on a Winter Self-Discovery kick. And I had an afternoon alone. So what, you might say. Or, you might say, “3 hours?! In a row??” . I myself fit into the latter category.
I went to Sears to buy another tube of Estee Lauder Zero-Smudge mascara because my daughter appropriated mine. And I had a gift card, you see. So I wandered over to Clinique because they make some good, and more affordable, stuff and they had a GWP.
Their gifts are pretty good and free has a certain appeal that I’m certain you can understand, especially if you have teenagers. I wish they’d put some new lip products in those gifts. The ol’ Different Grape (this is a widely wearable color?), Apple Cider ( less wearable than A Different Grape), and Raspberry Glace (kind of boring), they’ve seen their day. I guess that among Clinique lipsticks, I really like the Butter Shine best, but I can see how not everyone would because it’s so creamy. I do like the choice of gifts, the various glosses, and how they’ve done a warm and cool option.
Clinique has a PWP offer right now of Summer Pinks or Summer Bronzes.
I’m always drawn to foundation. It fascinates me for some reason. There’s a sticky spot in my head for all those nuances of beige. My own skin issues are,
-lines under eyes,
- a lot of pigment discolorations on sides of face,
-large pores on nose,
but the skin is pretty smooth in the sense of not-bumpy.
Foundation these days is astounding in the number of finishes available and even the more complete coverage products look and feel pretty good. So I started looking for a foundation with heavier coverage that might still look believable with a face full, and would allow for less coverage in some places and much more in others. Although we all need a darker skin-tone concealer (for imperfections on the skin) along with the lighter one (for shadows), I feel unlikely to begin mixing 2 concealers to arrive at my perfect shades. Even if I did, I don’t have time to dot concealer on a hundred little spots. What if foundation alone could cover well enough to hide those pigment spots?
Decades ago, foundation used to be too pink. Eventually, I think makeup artists convinced cosmetic companies that skin is actually more yellow than it is pink. Now, I wonder if a lot of products are too yellow. The salespeople tell you that they make it that way to diminish redness. Well, ok, but you’re not supposed to see the yellow tones. Your skin becomes a different color than your ears. I see skin as kind of grayish, but maybe that’s because mine is. I freely admit that I have no experience matching foundation to anybody but myself. Does anyone remember Club Monaco makeup? Monica Lewinsky wore it, just to date it for you. Those were neutral foundation colors.
I found Repairwear in Fair Neutral 03 and Neutral 05. Micaela, the very nice Clinique saleswoman who has worked at our counter for years and knows me to be weird, contesting, and hard-to-please but does a great job of pretending I’m a normal client, gave me a sample. I’m thrilled to see they’re taking a page from the MAC book and doing this now; must have all been at the same staff meeting. You should get a sample too. It’s very hard to get a sense of this foundation, or any foundation, at the store. Like mascara, it can only be tested in your own bathroom.
What happened was this. I tried it on, just the smallest bit, as Micaela advised. She said clients who buy it love it and don’t buy another bottle for ages. Your initial impression is “No way, this is too masky”. But once it’s all spread out, after about 10 seconds, dayam, it looks good. It feels a little bit heavy if you get too much on, but your skin seems rather perfect. Maybe a little too perfect, but I can get with the drama easily. This is not the formulation to begin with if you’re leery of the artificiality of foundation.
Pick a Saturday when you have a lot of time. Apply it as you usually do your foundation. Realize immediately the coverage is more dense than you expected and the only way to make it look real is by wiping it off which will make your skin red and uneven. Rinse it all off instead. Wait 10 minutes.
Begin again. Use ¼ your usual amount of foundation. 1 pump of the bottle is about right for your face. Apply it on the side of your hand and from there, put little dots all over your face and start blending them together. You have lots of time to work it around. The sunscreen in it doesn’t sting so it can go on eyelids and at the inside corners of eyes.
Take a little more off your hand and dab it, or stipple with your foundation brush, over pigment irregularities. It covers very well without looking cakey. If you have larger pores, drive the foundation brush into them end-on, with a little more foundation, and they’ll go away. Only the thinnest coverage goes under the eyes, as with any foundation, mostly just to blend away the concealer lines.
It is supposed to dry matte, and it does an ok job of it. You will need powder. I don’t need more touchups during the day than I normally would. I think the product looks a little “tired” at the end of the day, after a couple of powder re-applications. If I were going out at night, I’d wash it off and reapply. Luckily, I have no night life besides chauffering to soccer games so … if it ain’t my problem, … it ain’t a problem!
I start with Clinique’s All About Eyes concealer in Light Neutral, fabulous in its own right, and paint it in the usual places, the darker shadows. I don’t even blend it in, just paint it on with a lipstick brush. Wait 2 minutes and it will dry looking like Indian paint. The foundation brush will blend it for you but don’t smear. Keep your foundation brush strokes feathery, light, and quick. You want the concealer to stay where you put it.
Don’t buy makeup without visiting Paula Begoun’s group at Beautypedia. You’ll get another opinion and a better sense of what’s in this product than I can give you. You’ll learn whether it deserves Clinique’s “anti-aging”, or even better “de-aging”, label.
Unbelievable someone could have so much to say about foundation.
-->Your initial impression is “No way, this is too masky”. But once it’s all spread out, after about 10 seconds, dayam, it looks good. It feels a little bit heavy if you get too much on, but your skin seems rather perfect. Maybe a little too perfect, but I can get with the drama easily. This is not the formulation to begin with if you’re leery of the artificiality of foundation.
Read moreColor Clarification
June 6, 2009
Makeup Model : Warm Spring was posted on Friday. I wanted to change that content before it published but the week got away from me. I so dislike the month of June, you have no idea. I know women who find September to be the month of lunacy. Me, it is June, no contest.
I did change it this morning. I won’t repeat what I said before. My point should have come across more strongly as needing to see the person being analyzed in many colors. Instead, it sounded like “my system is the only right one”.
The article got written that way as a crash between my perfectionist self, my very inexperienced self, and the requests I get to tell people their season or have “color parties”. When I say it can’t be done that way and nobody can look at someone and know their season, the look I get back is one of “well, you must not be any good then, because I was told I’m a Spring and I like yellow and you must be holding back so you can be paid”.
That’s frustrating on many levels. Out of that frustration, I implied that color analysis MUST be done in person and that the system I use is the only right one.
What I do sincerely believe is that in any system, the analyst has to see the person in a variety of colors in slightly-overcast-midday light. Early day has too many blue wavelengths. Later on, too many yellow wavelengths. Too much sun overexposes. It is hard to look at one rendition of that person, be it photo or in person, and be able to tell the season. Maybe that’s just me, because I understand colour best by comparison with other colours and their effects.
Secondly, well, yeah, I guess I do want to get paid for what I know and the resources I use. At least, I’d love people to not make the assumption that it’s a hobby and I could just tell them their season off the top of my head if I were really their friend. I realize nobody means harm, it’s just a relatively unknown field and few people have been exposed to how it works (or the life-changing value it has). Most particularly, I want to get paid to get it right.
For many people, whether for reasons of distance or cost or other, personal analysis with the whole drape thing is not an option. That doesn’t mean that there are no choices. Having a PCA done in person costs upwards of 150 to 300 and takes 2-3 hours minimum. Online services like Pretty Your World, which is I still believe is the most powerful image tool available to most people, costs half that. Lora Alexander and I had a project going together awhile back. We’ve ended up taking different directions, but I learned an enormous amount from her. I also believe she has the most thorough and multifaceted online PCA out there.
The analyst might want to see you in specific colours. They might prefer your hair up or down. They might not mind makeup or forbid it. They will guide you in all these issues. You will still be so much further ahead in understanding your personal coloring. You will have a swatch book, which is worth its weight in gold for the clothes and makeup shopping mistakes it spares you.
The point is you need to send many pictures. Drape every piece of clothing you have across yourself and take a picture. Lora, if you read this, please comment but I think you’d agree that the more pictures, definitely the better.
Bottom line, if I had the chance to have an online analysis or not have one done at all, I have no hesitation in recommending you have it done online. I swear to you that it is an amazing experience in finding your place and your look. We look less fat, old, and ugly in our right colors because like colors find one another and enhance or complete the appearance. That’s why they’re called complimentary colors, the red-greens and so on. Unlike colors fight the whole time. What we’re trying to find are the colours that you were painted with at birth. It all happens for a reason.
Perhaps all PCAs go through this at the beginning and get used to it. I wonder when I’ll outgrow saying things I don’t mean and behaving like someone I don’t even like. I have no respect for anyone who tries to get ahead by pushing anyone else down. If you can’t climb on your own merits, then you shouldn’t climb at all. It disturbs me to think that I seemed to do that very thing. Still learning, I guess.
Whether you’re raising children or dogs, or practicing medicine, or doing color analysis, I really believe there are as many right ways of doing it as there as people trying. I am not someone with a lot of unilateral beliefs about raw food diets for dogs and cats, spanking children, religion, and most other hot button topics. If I sounded rigid and inflexible, I sincerely apologize. I’m not that guy but I sure sounded like I was.
Note : Things are happening in a funny order here. I just posted this and see that Lora wrote a great reply to the Makeup Model : Warm Spring article. It got diverted to my spam, I don’t know why, but it’s posted now. Read it. Talk to us.
-->I changed the content of the Makeup Model : Warm Spring article that was posted yesterday.
The article got written in that way as a crash between my perfectionist self, my very inexperienced self, and the requests I get to tell people their season or have “color parties”. When I say it can’t be done that way and nobody can look at someone and know their season, the look I get back is one of “well, you must not be any good then, because I was told I’m a Spring and I like yellow and you must be holding back so you can be paid”.
Makeup Model : Warm Spring
June 5, 2009
Edit June 23/10 – Just a note to be sure everyone knows that this Makeup Model series of articles was posted before I became a Color Analyst. The articles have been very popular, so I leave them up, but the makeup recommendations are not necessarily those I’d make today. For anyone interested in more accurate Season and color advice, do look at 12blueprints.com or join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook.
We can’t shop for clothes without wondering “Is this my color?” At the makeup counter, we’re at the mercy of the taste of the salesperson or we just stick to the safe rut we’re in, resulting in 5 of the same shade of lip color rattling around the bottom of our purse. Not only are we not objective about ourselves in any way, but we don’t know what to look for.
The truth is that nobody knows their innate colors. Nobody. Famous and rich people get it wrong all the time. Until they’ve been analyzed, nobody knows their colors. Personal color analysts (PCAs) can’t guess their own seasons till they get draped or see themselves in many different colors (often many shades of the same color, red being particularly telling).
How controlled the lighting and background have to be depends on the analyst, as does the importance of hair and eye color. As with anything, there are many ways of arriving at the answer. With anesthesia, it’s not so much which drug you’re using as how well you know that drug. There is no right or wrong, no best or worst. There is an analogy here in that it’s not so much which color system you choose as how well the PCA knows that system.
Women might say “I wear a lot of white and navy.” Whatever. Navy and white might be better in your kitchen than on your body. Nobody can experiment with sure success till they’ve been color coded. Nobody knows their undertones. They might know their overtones but that’s not really helpful for making buying decisions. So if you don’t know your colors, don’t feel bad. 99% of the world doesn’t either.
Climbing down off my soapbox. I’ve just been at the Clinique counter and I look at the money women put down. As you know, I like MAC and Clinique. They don’t have everything but the price is manageable, the color selection is 6.5 out of 10, the application is 7 out of 10 (Clinique) and 8.8 (MAC) and most women can find these lines.
“Warm Spring” is a Color Me Beautiful label which allows for a flowing of any given season towards another, in this case Spring towards Autumn. This season doesn’t exist in all the color systems. Nonetheless, the 3 Spring seasons’ colors in any system are warmed by yellow and are clear. When I chose the colors below, I was working with Sci\Art’s True Spring swatch book.
If you’re Warm Spring, you have noticeable gold, orange, copper, or strawberry tones in your hair but your skin is still warmed by yellow. You are too fair to move into the golder, hardier-looking skin of an Autumn. Think of Nicole Kidman (notice how dark her eyebrows always are? they are seldom bleached to match her hair; may be deeper coloring than Spring going on here). Delicate skin, almost fragile looking. It’s skin that looks like it’s trying to have freckles but often doesn’t because it’s just so fair.
Your colors are moving towards the browner tones of Autumn. Blush and lip colors are coral and apricot, so stronger than peach and with some brown in them but still bright and lively. Warm Spring can take a lot of color.
Lips: All Springs should know about MAC Lustreglass in Instant Gold to warm and reduce the strength of many lip colors, and add a light yellow-gold shimmer; MAC Prolongwear in Clingpeach if you like this type of product.
Clinique Lipsticks in Golden Brandy, Peach Pop, Poppy Love, and Ripe Raisin.
Blush: NARS Luster or Gilda; NARS makes fantastic blush but demands a light application to look normal. Estee Lauder Pink Kiss might work.
Bobbi Brown PotRouge in Calypso Coral.
Eyeliner: Clinique Roast Coffee.
MAC Industry might work as a slightly warmed grey. Clinique Slate is too sharply grey as is MAC Grey Utility.
Eyeshadow: Clinique Butter Pecan and Copper Canyon. In the singles, Champagne was good. In the creams, Sable Shimmer Touch Tint is nice but awfully shiny.
MAC Camel which they no longer make, darn them, it was a superb color … MAC, bring back Camel!!!!
Eye hilite : Paula’s Choice Cream or Chiffon.
Mascara : Black-Brown.
Bronzer: MAC Golden, a truly good product.
-->We can’t shop for clothes without wondering “Is this my color?” At the makeup counter, we’re at the mercy of the taste of the salesperson.
The truth is that nobody knows their innate colors. Nobody. Famous and rich people get it wrong all the time. Until they’ve been analyzed, nobody knows their colors.
And undertones?? Are you kidding?
Book Review : The Omnivore’s Dilemma
June 1, 2009
What was the last non-fiction book that I could call un-put-down-able? That’s easy. There has never been another one.
I was speechless and spellbound.
Among its numerous awards, Michael Pollan‘s book was named by the NYT Book Review as One of the 10 Best of 2006. I would say One Of The 10 Best, period.
You can read the first chapter and read what others have said on the book’s web page.
If you eat, if you talk about food, if you buy or prepare food, if you think you know what you’re getting or you think you know where it comes from, you’re about to be politely but definitely awakened. You might wish you could continue living in your old world of un-knowing.
The book is divided into thirds. The first section takes us through the depressing and horrifying labyrinth of corn production and usage.
The farm ain’t what it used to be and is only barely where food begins. A netherworld has grown between farm and food store, a dense and solid wall of chemistry and creative marketing. After all, there’s a limit to how much food we can consume. Or is there? The food bureaucracies keep finding new ways of making us pack away more and filling their pockets while they watch.
Meanwhile, the farmer is caught in a game that he can only lose. I wish he’s talked more about the psychology of the farmer. A more stubborn and independent group you will never find. They cannot come to an agreement about anything. Their collective character is part of the problem.
Section 2 takes us to an “organic” farm, though he explains that the “organic” label is so disputed as to be rendered almost meaningless. Salatin’s farm is what we want to believe we’re getting if we buy organic. Before anyone spouts another opinion about the Farmer’s Market, before you resist when your teenagers announce that they’re going vegan, before you decide if your organic strawberries are worth the cost, arm yourself with some facts.
I think most people who buy organic (I don’t, by the way) realize that it’s not what we hope for. Just as in buying Green cleaning products and non-animal-tested cosmetics (and I do), we are all trying to cast a vote for chemical-free cruelty-free world and saying we’ll pay more for it.
In the description of this farm is a prayer for our future that will never be answered. I felt almost overjoyed to read about Joel Salatin’s farm. This farmer’s understanding of natural process and his methods of miniaturizing them to suit his 500 acres are astounding. The workings of this incredible place in Virginia are so beautifully orchestrated to achieve cycles within cycles that it seems to be the only and obvious answer to the industrial mess that corn has become.
Except for one problem – it utilizes, even exploits, the inherent randomness of nature. The industrial revolution came about when business realized it was cheaper to product 1000 identical units than 10 different ones. They went on to notice that the numbers worked the same way for the productivity of human beings, meaning that 1000 people doing the same thing were cheaper to pay and easier to control than 10 people doing different things.
I wish he’d outlined the finances of Salatin’s farm better. Does his wife work? Yes, he has no inputs or loss to disease, but he needs buildings and machines. What does he clear in a year? The size of his animal and plant harvest are given and they are impressive but I’d have loved to see a balance sheet. For Salatin, it probably doesn’t matter because he’s living a life he loves and believes in and there’s no dollar sign on that. For farmers interested in trying to transition from industrial corn and soybean production to a model that allows them to truly be the stewards of the land that they pride themselves in being, more dollar talk would have been interesting.
The final example is an illustration of what a complete thinker Pollan is as he looks at a topic from every angle. We accompany him on a mission to prepare a meal that he has gathered and prepared at every stage. He forages for mushrooms and fruit. He decides that if he’s going to eat meat, he needs to experience the act of killing to defend his action of eating it.
Every spring, as I prepare to make the annual Tabbouleh, I look at the oregano and mint in my garden, and think “how sure are you?” I feel surging trepidation as I wonder if it’s mutated somehow. I worry that we’ll all have awful cramps later on. Who discovered that it was the rhubarb stems you could eat? and if it took awhile for the leaves to kill you, how did they trace it back? Pollan recreates for us the entire history of humans learning through trial and serious error what is safe for them to eat.
This section contains some of the most fascinating discussions in the book and raises some disturbing points. For instance, we might deplore hunting but eat meat. Regardless of how we feel about the moral decency of taking life or enjoying killing, our position may be untenable since the wild animal has had an overall better life and death than the farmed animal, most especially the factory-farmed animal.
If McDonalds’s has a failure rate of 5% at the abattoir, does this mean it’s acceptable if only 5 cows per 100 are skinned alive? Jesus. And apparently the situation at the slaughterhouse improved when McDonald’s came along and set some standards. As the WalMart of the food industry, McDonalds, and indeed the whole fast food machine, has to appear beyond reproach at every level, but even 1 in 100 seems to me too many. Fast food walks a fine line, as does the cigarette industry, because they are selling us something that may be bad for us. We don’t have to choose to buy, but the argument is not that different. The less public inquisition, the better for them.
Maybe the level of complexity that we’ve allowed to overtake the food industry has been a way of protecting ourselves from the debasing ,ugly, cruel reality and allows us to blame someone else for the destruction.
You’ll also find the most intelligent discussion of vegetarianism in these pages. No single outcome is revealed to be the right one and no opinion is criticized or accused. Pollan doesn’t propose the right path or a new path. His goal seems to be to force us to question at the deepest level our feelings about food and recognize the level of complexity and near-impossibility of finding the solution.
I wish he’d contrasted European and Canadian farm policies with those in the US but I expect that’s the topic of another book and some distance from Pollan’s real interests. Canada doesn’t deserve to have farmers. The bureaucracy forces them to compete on a global playing field with a huge handicap. Perhaps cynical of me, but until we know what it means to line up for 5 hours to get bread or what empty shelves look like in the supermarket, nothing will change. Europeans know all too well what that looks like and treat their farmers more carefully.
For me, cooking is just another chore, a job that I can never cross off. Through his eyes and experience, I see that preparation, sharing, even the saying of a grace is the human tradition of gratitude for the sacrifice that an animal, plant, and place must make to feed us.
My brother-in-law, Xavier, is the only bred-in-the-bone forager I know. It always seems so odd to me that he thinks about food so much. I now understand that he is not perpetually hungry but simply showing the deepest respect for the true source of food. The skill of foraging, that most of us have long lost, takes enormous time as Pollan learned.
Once we sit at his table, sharing the final meal, we have covered a lot of territory.
-->
What was the last non-fiction book that I could call un-put-down-able? That’s easy. There has never been another one.
I was speechless and spellbound.
Among its numerous awards, Michael Pollan’s book was named by the NYT Book Review as One of the 10 Best of 2006. I would say One Of The 10 Best, period.
Get daily makeup and colour updates. Join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook! A Click on the box will take you there.
-
A Greener Tea
Web Maintenence by Rick Beckman
