RSSGoodbye, Lipliner
February 1, 2010
A line around the lips first seems like overkill. It’s too much paint and too much time. What if you could apply a transparent sealant around the lipline that sets a shape for everything to come, and didn’t let it smear?
Read moreProduct Review : Estee Lauder Double Wear Lipstick
November 1, 2009
Gina said “this stuff does not move….SERIOUSLY it doesn’t feather, bleed, leak, run, walk, saunter, promenade….it is as sedentary as cream cheese on a knife that has gone through the dishwasher. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it…Lord have mercy! I am saved!”
She’s right, of course.
Product Review : Maybelline Color Sensational Lipstick
September 30, 2009
A brighter, coloured lip is more than anti-aging. It also looks more interesting. More sophisticated. More confident. More creative. More exciting. More fearless. It is less safe and it gets noticed. That takes some getting used to so you don’t begin with the full face on Day 1. But is “Don’t notice me. Don’t make a fuss over me.” , really what you want to tell the world about you?
Read moreMakeup Model : Cool Winter
July 15, 2009
The more you work the particular strengths of your season, the more together your look will be. Winter is a season of stark clarity and respecting that will work the feeling best. If Spring bubbles, Summer flows, and Autumn glows. Winter gleams like platinum. This is not a season for fussy details. The colors are a little hard and the look is dramatic. There is no need to be shy with color intensity. The stronger the color, the healthier the season looks.
Read moreMakeup 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 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 moreMakeup Model : Warm Spring
June 5, 2009
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?
Makeup Model : Light Spring
May 16, 2009
This is a big range of women. You’re Ellen and Kate Hudson (or at least, Kate looks like Light Spring. Have you seen Ellen’s pic from high school? Reddish hair. Although the blond hair she wears is beautifully done, sometimes I think it makes her eyes look bloodshot. Ellen, you need to don the gray showercap and draping cape of truth and uncover who you really are). You can be the fairest softest coloring and you can be the blond beach ideal.
In general, Spring looks better in peach than pink. If you think you like both, what you might be liking is the lightness of the two shades. The basis of color analysis is understanding what the colors that flatter you best have in common. So, we’ll have to push the extremes to decide if you’re Light Spring or Light Summer. Take the peach all the way to coral in clothing or makeup – only the Spring will pull it off, while the Summer will be more beautiful in a cooler rose pink color.
Or try the ultimately Springs Only color of yellow-green. Summer would probably refuse to even put the item on and negotiate hard for cool, light turquoise. Spring would be sneaking the yellow-green into her purse.
Light Spring represents that type of coloring that is most prominently Spring (warmed by clear yellow) but has some cool carryover from Summer. Your colors follow suit, with pink-peach instead of pure peach or yellow colors, and tan-brown instead of golden brown in your eyeshadow.
Colors to sample
Lips: Clinique Colour Surge Butter Shine in Pink-a-boo; look at Poppy Love while you’re there. I love these lipsticks, so wearable and comfortable.
Eyeliner: Estee Lauder Softsmudge Brown.
Eyes: MAC BrownDown, Kid, Wedge; Stila Champara, Tolima.
Eye hilite : MAC Wisp, BlancType; Stila Chinois.
I am loving the blog The Next Best Thing To Going Shopping Yourself (TNBTTGSY) for the swatch posts. Follow the link to see the MAC eyeshadows. On the site, you’ll also find all the Stila eyeshadows swatched in a different post. Shop at home thanks to the wonderful woman who does all this work.
Look very attentively at the iris of your eye. Is there a soft yellow in it? Many Spring eyes have a yellow light in their eyes to correspond with the yellow light that their entire body coloring emanates. If you see that color there, emphasize it with a yellowish hilite. Have you looked at Paula’s Choice Chiffon? It is fantastically colored, fantastically matte, and fantastically priced.
Mascara : Dark Brown – be sure it’s darker than your eyeliner or the liner can look too harsh.
Bronzer : This is light skin. It can handle warmer tones but in a gentle dose. MAC Select Sheer Pressed powder goes on well and some of the lighter shades have some peachiness that could work as bronzer for this group. Go easy with the application so you don’t end up with an overly colorful face. That’s just practice.
-->In general, Spring looks better in peach than pink. If you think you like both, what you might be liking is the lightness of the two shades. The basis of color analysis is understanding what the colors that flatter you best have in common.
Read moreMakeup Model : Deep Winter
May 6, 2009
How do you know if you’re Deep Winter?
Dark eyes and dark hair are common but not a requirement. Your skin can go from Porcelain to Ebony so that’s not helpful.
So, Penelope Cruz is a classic Deep Winter…or at least, she looks like she would be. She can wear black but she has some ability to wear a few warmer colors. Her best spectrum wouldn’t be as cool and sharp as Elizabeth Taylor’s whom you just wouldn’t put in rust.
What about Salma Hayek? If you’re not sure, push the extremes of the 2 possibilities. Deep Winter holds the neutral line with Deep Autumn, where Deep Winter is cooler. You could take a Deep Winter all the way to blue-black hair and red-violet lips and they’d still look pretty good. You could take a Deep Autumn to bronze hair and beyond to orange-brown and it would be wearable. I can see Salma in the black hair and violet lips. I do not see her in orange hair.
Now, this doesn’t work backwards. You can’t assume red hair is automatically Autumn. Not at all. Often they’re Spring or Summer, many times, Winter. Why do books keep showing Autumn with red hair? I don’t know. Maybe because red hair goes well with orange clothing (analogous colors), so the extrapolation says the person must be Autumn. The closer to orange the hair, the more possibility it belongs to an Autumn.
Julia Roberts has dark hair and eyes. Since blue-black hair and purple lips would be ghoulish, but orange-brown hair is good, she’s likely a Deep Autumn.
Keira Knightley? Tricky. Very difficult. I’ve seen people conclude both. I side with Deep Winter but black hair isn’t perfect; neither is orange hair. This auburn here is good, and a Deep Winter can do auburn. It’s creating some odd shadowing around her nose and yellow around her mouth but it may be the makeup or lighting. For me, her eyes are more arresting and her makeup better in pure Winter colors. They might clear the yellow and turn her skin to milk. Maybe she’s neither. This is a woman who probably needs to be draped in person to figure this out.
Jeanne Tripplehoorn? I cannot see her in orange hair.
Jessica Alba? She’s almost surely Deep something but her hair’s been dark and her lips have been cool red lately and I think it looks forced. I see her better in orange, tawnies, copper colors. Likely some sort of Autumn. With the dark neutral brown hair below, her skin looks washed out and the creases from nose to corners of mouth become noticeable.
Sophia Loren? She can have quite lion-colored hair and bronze lips, so she’s Deep, but it’s probably Autumn.
Anne Hathaway? Blacker hair and redder lips work fine. If ever skin had a lack of warmth, that would be it. She is surely Winter, the incarnation of Miss Snow White. Is she Deep Winter, or cooler yet as Clear Winter or Cool Winter? Probably Cool Winter, because I don’t see much compliment from warmed reds, but who knows without drapes.
Katie Holmes? I can see auburn hair or wine hair but not orange hair. She can wear rust and tomato red as well as the cool dark colors, so probably a Deep Winter.
Colors
Lips: NARS Dolce Vita Sheer Lipstick and lipgloss are good cool coral colors; the gloss is gorgeous in texture and durability, as are all NARS glosses.
Now you need a plum-violet color: Mary Kay Berry Kiss is about as blue-pink as you can go, but this is a nice one (bluer, pinker, and brighter than the picture below). If it seems too pink, try Whipped Berries, warmed up just a little but so slightly foggier and darker, for darker women.
Mary Kay Amber Suede appears more orange and it goes on very dark and pigmented. If you blot if well and apply a gloss over top, the color left behind is quite lovely, again for darker women.
L to R, Whipped Berries, Amber Suede, Garnet Frost, Berry Kiss
Are you looking at these thinking “I thought she said she doesn’t like dark lips?”. I am. The thing is, once you find a color of makeup that repeats a color already in your face (a concept we’ll come back to often) or body, it’s amazing how heavily you can apply it. You can literally pack it on and it looks real because you already have the color in you. Maybe I’ve made this point too obviously, but you see, herein lies the strength of color analysis. It will identify the colors that were used to paint YOU.
So what is your “color-within” lip, your neutral, since those above are all pinkish : MAC Slimshine in Scant will be close. It contains some brown, as this season needs since it’s the bridge between Autumn and Winter.
Much as I believe in neutral makeup, I think all 3 women up there look a little flat with lips the same color as their face. I need to come up with a new term. Neutral means neither warm nor cool, a medium tone type of beige or brown or gray. Many would call the lips in those photos neutral. When I say neutral, I extend the definition to include “any color already in your face is your neutral”.
However, I’m realizing that’s confusing and seems contradictory. Nude just means “like you have nothing on”. Maybe the word I need is Natural. That seems to work. I’m thinking as I type so it’s coming out stream-of-consciousness here. I’ll clarify in a separate post because I just thought of it now.OK, shut up, Christine, and get on with it.
If you still think these are dark, mix them with a clear gloss or a lighter lip color like Estee Lauder Elizabeth Pink.
Good ol’ Clinique Black Honey lip gloss that you see in every magazine suits this group nicely.
Body Shop 05 (I believe the color is Strawberry) can work as a bright.
Blush: Your color-within “natural” blush : take a close look at MAC Breath of Plum. If it’s too pink, look at Lancome Aplum, my favorite. It is cool, red-violet as all Winters need, and doesn’t seem too blue or brown. It just fades into the skin, just as a Natural colour will.
If you want to put a little more on it, Clinique Berry Delight is a good cool coral to go with Dolce Vita lipstick or gloss (don’t buy Dolce Vita blush, it’s too dusty red-brown; NARS Amour is a better contender – Winter is a season of color clarity, not dullness).
Another red-violet blush to go with the lips above : Mary Kay Bold Berry ; Clinique Breathless Berry is cooler than Berry Delight but not as cool as Bold Berry.
Eyeliner: Clarins Waterproof eyeliner in 03 Grey, a sparkly dark grey; Annabelle Kohl Eyeliner in 77 Charcoal, terribly smudgy but great color so powder over it.
Winter is the only group that can wear black eyeliner if the depth of their coloring supports it. If not, the darkest grey or black-coffee brown are darker colors that appear less hard.
Eyeshadow: Clinique Totally Neutral ; MaryKay makes Charcoal eye shadow, a lovely matte midtone dove grey for the cooler women. Paula’s Choice Charcoal is also a beautiful matte grey-brown, more brown than the MaryKay, a fantastic shade for those who are close to Deep Autumn but need the coolness of Winter.
Your natural color : Merle Norman Mink.
Eye hilite : Paula’s Choice Beige. ( Note that Paula’s Choice is selling off her eyeshadows for $4 or less. These are great products, perfectly matte, all available as samples. You will never find a better beauty deal anywhere.)
Within each season, there can be great variety of hair, eye, and skin tone so these color suggestions are generalities. I’m a Deep Winter. Once I get my hair color adjusted, I’ll show you how it looks. Just changing the makeup has made a big difference. Good thing I buy my clothes at Value Village or we’d be living on a raft.
-->How do you know if you’re Deep Winter?
Dark eyes and dark hair are common but not a requirement. Your skin can go from Porcelain to Ebony so that’s not helpful.
So, Penelope Cruz is a classic Deep Winter…or at least, she looks like she would be. She can wear black but she has some ability to wear a few warmer colors. Her best spectrum wouldn’t be as cool and sharp as Elizabeth Taylor’s whom you just wouldn’t put in rust.
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