Hot or Not Beauty

After evening out and perfecting your complexion, you have created the canvas for the next stages of makeup application.

Before applying your eyeshadow, apply a primer (like Urban Decay’s Primer Potion) and after it’s completely dry, use a large brush and apply a neutral eyeshadow the color of your skin tone to ensure that whatever colors you use afterwards will not stain.

Favorite eyeshadows:

MAC - Eyeshadow
Chanel - Le Quatre Ombres de Chanel
Shu Uemura

There are no rules regarding whatever eye-makeup should be for these types of occasions. You should consider the time of day and what kind of outfit you will be wearing and leave the more heavy and dramatic looks for evening rather than daytime. However there are no set rules, if you want to wear smoky black and deep red lips by all means do so.

Prefer a more holding eyeliner like a gel eyeliner rather than pencil (if you prefer pencil, then opt for a waterproof one) to assure that it will hold throughout the day.

Bobbi Brown’s Gel Liner
MAC’s Fluidline
MAC’s Powerpoint
Guerlain’s Loose Eye Kohl
Make Up For Ever’s Aqua Cream Liner
Make Up For Ever’s Cake Liner

I prefer waterproof mascara for these occasions, even if you’re not emotional you never know when an unexpected tear might appear, so be ready and bullet-proof.

I recommend one of Helena Rubinstein’s mascaras, they’re my personal favorites and allow all type of desired effects, my Holy Grail is Lash Queen. For a mascara primer, use the Shiseido one without a doubt. If you’re more daring then opt for false lashes.

Do your eyebrows with a dark pigmented matte powder, using brow brush that has hard bristles making sure that you don’t overdue the application to avoid the eyebrows ending up too dark and artificial.

Only consider contouring if it’s an afternoon/evening wedding, contouring in the daytime looks extremely artificial and you’ll be drawing attention to areas that you would prefer to keep minimized. You can add a touch of bronzer to the areas where the sun naturally hits your face, but avoid orange pigmented ones or those with too much glitter.

Unless your skin is dry/normal (allowing the use of a cream blush), opt for pressed or loose powder blush, applying it with a light hand to ensure a careful and controlled application (invest in a good blush brush as well) and while a bit of shimmer is perfectly acceptable avoid colors with too much glittery look to them, a softer, more formal look is quite often preferred and photographs a lot better.

Where blushes are concerned, my preferences go to MAC, Chanel and NARS.

There are no definite rules where lips are concerned, try to keep lip-lining as natural as possible and fill in your lips with your liner so you won’t end up with lined lips and nothing else underneath, keep your liner as closest to your lipstick color as possible and usually a creamier lip liner is easier to apply and blend. To avoid harsh lines, blend the liner with your lip brush.

My favorites are Chanel’s Le Crayon Levres and MAC’s Cremestick liner.

Add a touch of gloss for a pouty lip or lay it on for a more lacquered vinyl-ish look with:

Lancome’s Juicy Tubes
MAC’s Tinted Lipglass
Chanel’s Glossimer
Yves Saint-Laurent’s Le Touche de Brilliance
Dior’s Gloss Show
NARS‘ Lip Lacquer

After looking your most gorgeous, the next article will focus on what to bring in your purse to always look your freshest.

Almost all great cosmetic brands have specially created cosmetic lines that are specific to the Asian Market, like Lancome’s Blanc Expert, Shiseido with Lucent or Superieure, Helena Rubinstein, MAC with their whitening line recently brought to the West as Lightful, Clinique also has a specific whitening line called Derma-White and has paved its way to the Western market just to name a few.

Around the time of Lightful’s release some became infuriated viewing it as just another euphemism for racism accusing the cosmetics company of being racist feeling that the product line was intended to make ethnic darker skin white, which is completely far from the truth.

So what are whitening products and what are they aimed at?

Mostly, what these products do is block or reduce melanin production by inhibiting the production of tyrosinase and breaking down the production of melanin, thus it doesn’t bleach the skin like many would think, but it just stops the skin from producing the substance that darkens the skin’s pigmentation.

Amongst the chemicals used in these products the more recurrent are hydroquinone (used topically), other well known alternatives to hydroquinone (banned in France for fear of cancer risk) are Vitamin C and Alpha Hydroxy acids (such as lactic and glycolic acids) and are present in many of today’s cosmetics either because they’re high in anti-oxidants (Vitamin C) or are chemical exfoliants that help shed older layers of skin that usually can cause blockage and blemishes.

Next, misconceptions and applications of today’s whitening cosmetics, if you chose to use them.

Although we’re quite far from the times where aristocracy would use white lead to create a ghostly white complexion, such products not only would cause lead poisoning also had arsenic in their complexion.

One of the most iconic would probably be Queen Elizabeth I, but white complexion was also incredibly popular in the court of Fashion Queen Marie Antoinette.

It was common belief that whiter complexions were a sign of nobility, mostly it meant that you just didn’t have to work outside in the sun. Also, it was believed that a paler complexion would blur wrinkles and signs of aging far easily, one of the reasons why Elizabeth I’s well known white lead look was called “The Mask of Youth”.

However in the West, times have changed and beaches are filled with Sun God worshipers for that ideal bronze gleam on their skin that creates an all out healthy glow. Asian women on the other hand try their hardest to achieve a porcelain tone to their skin.

The basic belief was the same, paler complexions were a sign of being noble and protected from the sun’s rays and to this day geisha wear white foundation products to become beauty at its most iconic.

So what do today’s cosmetics offer and what can they truly accomplish?

To be continued.