Thank GOD for make-up! And thank HEAVENS for the make-up we can buy now – because it sure is a serious improvement on what I used to use, once upon a time…
Today, textures are sheer and gorgeous and make skin look luminous. When I started out, textures looked – well, like a mask. I wore PanCake and PanStick, which were created by Hollywood make-up artists in the golden age of movies to cover absolutely everything – so that you could barely see the skin! I figured if it was good enough for the movie stars, it was good enough for me, so I plastered the stuff on like it was going out of fashion. (Which happily it did, in the end…) Before that, I’d just copy my Mum: she had a bottle of foundation, and she’d do these two stripes of lipstick on her cheeks like a Native American Indian, and blend them in as blusher. For my mother, lipstick was more like a stain, so that’s what I did, too. Then I’d add lots and lots of mascara from a little compact that I used to have to spit in to wet the brush! Happily I’ve progressed a bit since then…! (And so has mascara technology…)
For day, I keep it very simple. Of course for evenings – and especially for stage work – I go to town much more, as you’ll see. (And actually, stage and evening make-up can be pretty similar, because what you’re trying to do is create that ‘wow’ factor from a distance).
Make-up is all a trick of the light, basically. If you learn to play with light to enhance your best features, you will look fabulous. It’s that simple. So after a certain age, you want to avoid flat, matte textures because they aren’t youthful. You need a little gleam and shimmer and dewiness, because that’s what looks young. Look at those old Hollywood movie stills, or a movie of Marlene Dietrich. She was so good at manipulating the light to bring out her best features – those cheekbones, those brows! – that she was virtually her own lighting engineer. Once you start to understand how light works to enhance your face, you can basically become one, too.
Try this trick on your lips to see what I mean. Look in a mirror: draw all over your lips with a lip pencil, or press on a touch of lipstick with your finger – so sheer it’s like a stain. Then take a lip gloss and add a dab of it in the middle of the lip, and smack them together. Magic! Your lips will not only look instantly sexier, but youthfully plumper – and all because of a little trick of the light…
Prime time… Prime time First things first: what really helps create the ‘canvas’ is to use a cream with light-reflective pigments as a ‘primer’ – which basically to make skin look like it has a sort of candlelit glow. (I use my own Glory Days cream, from the Lulu’s Time Bomb range.)
The art of concealer. I don’t wear foundation any more. But concealer? Absolutely! After a certain age, I think that concealer is more age-appropriate – because you don’t end up with that ‘mask’. So after I’ve primed my skin with moisturiser, I reach for my light-reflecting concealer pen – which happens to be Dior Skinflash: I pump it a few times to get the cream concealer onto the brush, and then I start drawing. Literally. I stroke the brush along the grooves that run from my nose to my mouth, and all around my mouth, too. (Then when I put my lip pencil on, my lips really stand out.) I add a wee bit in the fold below my mouth, I blend with my fingers – and that’s it.
Perfect lips – pencil-style. After I’ve used my concealer, my very next make-up step is to line my lips. One of the things I really notice is that most women I know don’t bother with lip pencil – but I can’t live without mine. Look into the mirror and use the pencil to draw outside the natural lip line. Go on, try it! It’s a miracle-worker. I start with my more nude, slightly more peachy-beige shade of lipliner, and then I go over with a pinkier shade of nude. Together they make the perfect can’t-tell-it-from-real lip shade. Be sure to choose a super-soft texture – you don’t want anything hard, or that’s how the line will look when it’s on your face.
Get the gloss. I apply lip gloss to top and bottom lips – and I’ve come to terms with the fact it’s going to wear off during the day. But because of my lipliner ‘base’, I know that when it wears off I’ll still have a lip-coloured pout underneath. And the great thing about gloss is that it’s so easy to apply, you can redo it almost any time even without a mirror. Even in the back of a taxi with no lights on, come to that…
