It’s no longer news that false eyelashes are back, for the street and not just for the catwalk. You can have almost any shade you like — a flitter of plum, a waft of steel-blue. But if you haven’t patience for the application, you can fake it; rather than advertising a natural look, new mascaras aim to make your own lashes look artificially extended. In fact, makeup this season is all about creating a finished look. It requires work and dedication.
There is something smug about women who insist they go for the natural look — and something deeply annoying about men who say they like women without makeup: Are they sure they have ever seen one? The “bare” face is far from effort-free, except for the very young who have no problems with uneven skin tone. Forty may be the new 30, and 60 the new 40, but the honest woman admits to what sunshine and lifestyle have done, and reaches for a little help.
The old axiom was that you privileged either eyes or lips, not both — a mean suggestion, on the lines of “have fun, but not too much.” The full-face need not mean jammy overstatement in the old Hollywood mode. It can be refined and subtle; but defined lips need defined eyes — otherwise it looks as if you have been interrupted half way through re-making yourself, tumbled out into the early morning by a fire alarm.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
This year, fully made-up faces are all around us, in fact and fiction. Joan from Mad Men reigns supreme with impeccably colored lips and a heavy swoop of eyeliner. Cheryl Cole — is she fact or media fiction? — pays equal attention to strong eyes, strong lips, strong cheeks. Michelle Obama similarly tends to all three; serious women know that bright features add to the gaiety of nations and impart monumental confidence. On the spring/summer 2010 catwalks, swooping brows, curling across the forehead, soared over an exaggerated up-flick; they suggested irresistibly something carved and triumphalist, a ship’s figurehead.
So which of these latest looks are wearable? Orange lips (as seen at Prada’s spring/summer show) are possibly less dismaying if you call the shade mandarin or tangerine. At Givenchy, models had full-on scarlet mouths; there, and at Christian Dior, there were deep, smoky eyes to go with those bold lips.
Too much trouble? Last month a Grazia survey of 100 “people” — presumably women, but maybe not — found that 9 percent would need to be paid to leave home without makeup.
There are few failures so bleak that they cannot be brightened by Touche Eclat, or Dior Skinflash, or some other witchcraft in a stick. First, you paint the face of the woman you would like to be, then you stare at it in the mirror, then you go out and imitate her till the job’s done. “War paint” is what men used to call it, and so it is, but the war’s not between the sexes; it’s fought against adverse circumstances, against limitations, against nature and her stingy hand. It’s better futures we make up, not just better faces.
There’s a humble artisan pleasure in creating the full face. It’s like any kind of painting; you have to prepare the surface (sand it down, maybe, with an exfoliator), you have to prime it before the color will stay put, find the undercoat to go beneath the base. The search for the perfect base is as constant in my own life as the search for the perfect sentence: The lightest color (so the joins don’t show); matte, but not dead; never shiny because I dread shine; a base that gives kindly coverage, but can’t be felt. It’s amazing how creepily sensitive facial skin becomes, so even a mask of silk is still a mask.
Usually, as soon as I’ve tracked down a color, weight and texture I like, the manufacturer withdraws it; but in any event, my hobby is to stand in department stores striping myself with anything that looks hopeful, and to accumulate boxes full of back-ups and alternatives, because no one product will cope with all seasons, all lighting, and all the perverse things skin can do in different conditions. Air travel, for instance, is wretchedly drying, and when women rule the world, aircraft will be misted with water, as in the tropics they’re pumped full of bug-spray. Still, I must be doing something right: I’m often greeted by “You look well!” rather than “Not dead yet?” That is an achievement in itself for the paper-white. For decades my skin had no real problem except pallor, but I thought it must have flaws invisible to my eye. Now that color is provided by pin-pricks of broken veins I have proper grounds for humility.
There are two ways to go — self-effacement, or self-assertion. A smooth, primed base is effacement enough. The finished face is not an exercise in vanity, more an exercise in patience and pre-planning. The search for a second skin is, in fact, pure pleasure, a natural urge to prepare a surface and then paint it, to play with shadow and light; it’s harmless till scalpels and needles get in there.
When I was 16 I would never have dreamed of leaving the house at weekends without three colors of eyeshadow and two coats of mascara. Lipstick, though, seemed too much a siren signal, and I kept it pale. In my 20s I learned how to paint on a scarlet mouth, but now I’m at rethink age, returned to self-consciousness, exploring how to look defined without looking like a caricature of my younger self. The full face is perhaps no longer a good idea in practice, but it’s wonderful in principle. The art of full makeup was called “making the best of yourself” till a flat-footed and scowling version of feminism called it making a whore of yourself. It’s best, perhaps, to think of it as folk art: just more excitingly susceptible to seasonal trends.
The new take on smoky eyes means navy, or an overlay of purple — this is an amazingly kindly shade, and makes common old blue eyes take on a fascinating hint of green. If you must indulge in the punkish perversity of pink eyeshadow, the intervention of heavy black liner will stop you looking like a rabbit; but why would you persist with pink, when there’s peach?
Red lipstick becomes possible when it’s mellowed by golden peach and desert apricot shades, lion colors to warm both eyes and cheeks. But this season a clear, defined mouth doesn’t have to be red; coral is everywhere in the new palettes, is easy to carry off, and perfect to wear with moth-wing neutrals or the nude/blush shades seen in chiffon and fluid silks. Softer shades for eyes and lips have a metallic glint — creamy beiges shot through with gold, khaki with a sparkle. Lucky dark girls can wear lilac lips. Even the minimalists will smudge in some navy kohl with a careless finger. Those willing to admit to effort will sail into summer with features inked in: turquoise, violet or storm-blue, sepia smiles.
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