Lifestyle Choices

Every good makeup begins with a water-in-oil moisturizer and a sunscreen lavishly applied over clean skin and then given a chance to settle in. It is rather like making a mayonnaise. You can’t rush things. You need to wait for your skin to take to the moisturizer before you put on your foundation; otherwise you will end up with a flawed finish and your makeup will not last. “Taking” time is usually about two minutes.

 

Many Moisturizers

In addition to the ordinary moisturizers, there are also tinted ones on the market. These products are halfway between moisturizers and foundations. They impart some color and also provide you with some measure of protection from water loss. In France they are often called creme sport, because they can be worn, by women who ordinarily would not want to cover their skin with a foundation, for instance during a tennis match. They give a very light cover but can be a nice way of simply adding a healthy glow to your skin. Some of them also contain sunscreens.

When choosing a tinted moisturizer, look for one that is not too far away from your own skin tone, or you will find it doesn’t blend in and cover well. Some of them give little color, and others are much stronger —even too strong. You need to experiment.

Among the tinted moisturizers are the “color correctives”—productstinted a specific hue in order to change the look of your own, natural coloring. They are worn under your ordinary foundation. A green moisturizer will soften a florid skin, toning it down and making it look more neutral, so that your naturally high color doesn’t interfere with whatever eye shadows, blushers, and lipsticks you are going to use. Green will also help conceal red blotches and spots on your skin. A mauve-colored moisturizer will improve a dull complexion and brighten the face of someone who is too pale. An apricot-colored corrective should be used only by the very few women who are really sallow and then only sparingly, on areas of the face that would naturally be expected to blush, such as the cheeks, the chin, and the upper part of the forehead, just beneath the hairline.

When you use a corrective, put it on with a sponge that has been dampened and then had all the excess water removed from it by wiping it against a towel.

 

The Foundation

Once your moisturizer has set, you are ready for the foundation. But why all over? Instead you can wear it only on parts of your face such as around the eyes, where it gives a good base for eye shadows, on your chin, and on your cheeks. The advantage to this is that you still get the wonderful, delicate shading of natural skin, rather than that all-over deadness that can come from covering your whole face with one opaque color. Or you can wear two shades of foundation: a lighter one in the center of your face (on the nose, forehead, cheeks, and chin) and the slightly darker one of the same tone around the outside (near the hairline and along the jawline). This has the effect of preserving a natural-looking gradation of color and still lending the finished look of a well-madeup face.

Another alternative is to go without foundation altogether, applying your colors (best to use cream and liquid eye shadows rather than powders in this case) directly to well-moisturized skin. For evening, however, or a very sophisticated look, an even, single-colored foundation lightly covering your whole face is best.

Foundations (sometimes called makeup bases) come in all colors and textures. Finding the right one for you is a matter of trial and error, and unfortunately in the process there often seems to be more error than anything else.

There are far too many colors on the market. About 80 percent of Caucasian skin should wear one foundation color: a flat true beige withneither pink nor peach overtones to it. It will look good on all ages of “northern European” skin, because it gives a neutral canvas on which to put your eye and lip colors. Many women—particularly Americans— make the mistake of opting for a peachy or golden foundation color in the belief either that their skin is too dull or that the extra brightness in their foundation will make them look younger. Neither notion is true.

A foundation is not meant to give strong color to a face. It is supposed to be flat and neutral. Blushers and shaders, and eye and lip colors, provide the color interest to a face. If your foundation is too bright already, you only end up looking overdone and in bad taste. You also won’t get the mileage you should out of your lip, cheek, and eye colors, for there will be too much skin color for them to compete with.

If your skin is olive or yellowish or very dark, then choose a foundation as close to its natural color as possible but slightly flatter. When testing out color, put it on your naked face, and then go out into the daylight to look at the results, before buying anything. Cosmetics counters, with all their lavish atmospheres and artificial lights, can greatly distort colors. And the skin on your hand (which is where most consultants try to put a sample of makeup) is very different in shade and texture from facial skin. It just won’t do.

The kind of foundation you choose depends on what kind of skin you have as well as on personal preference. Dry or aging skin does best with a cream or oil-based-liquid foundation that contains powder and gives a matt finish with any degree of cover you want. Oily skin demands a water-based liquid or cream or a cake or block-type makeup. But beware here. Many women make the mistake of wearing a foundation that is too heavy and end up with a greasy mess at the end of the day. For daytime wear, most oily skin is better off without foundation at all, simply covered with two layers of light, translucent powder to give it a matt finish which can be renewed periodically by applying more powder if necessary. This will avoid stimulating the sebaceous glands, as drying makeups can, to produce yet more oil. It also makes it possible to renew your matt finish easily so your face never becomes discolored or cakey-looking. The best way to apply foundation is with a sponge. Of course you can apply it with your fingertips, but you will never get the same perfect light coverage that you can with a sponge that has been dipped in cool water and then thoroughly wrung out until it is almost dry.

Put a little foundation in the palm of your left hand (if you are right- handed), and then dip the sponge into it and apply it to your face, brushing it lightly over your skin again and again until everything is well blended into your skin. If you want a heavy cover and a very matt look, instead of applying a thick coat of foundation, apply two thin coats, allowing a couple of minutes for the first one to dry before applying the second.

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