Lifestyle Choices

 

Light Draws the Eye

Highlighter is a powerful tool when it is used wisely. When carelessly or wrongly applied, it can make a face look positively absurd. The best highlighters are not white. Bone white is too harsh. Instead choose a pale ivory foundation to use as a lightener on the areas of the face you wish

 

The Eyes Have it

For most women, one of their best features is the eyes. Perhaps this is because eyes reveal so much of what goes on inside one. Makeup for eyes should emphasize this and show off the eyes‘ beauty and color. It should never be applied gratuitously, as it often is.

There are lots of ways to use eye makeup to improve eyes: to make deep-set eyes more prominent, to give more interesting shape to eyes that have little, to improve the look of an overhanging upper lid, and so forth. But all of them begin with the same principles: Use neutral tones such as flat browns (without red tones in them), grays, and grayed greens for establishing the shape of the eyes (the darker shades to define the sockets and the lighter beiges on the lids and under the brows), and then, after you have done that, add other colors for effect, if you wish.

All eye shadows are best applied with a brush, whether they are liquid, cream, or powder. Brushes give you good control over color application and make it possible, by brushing over and over the area, to blend colors masterfully so that there is perfect light coverage, with no demarcation lines. Of course there is no reason why you have to add other colors after doing the basic contouring. Indeed many faces look best without bright colors near the eyes, which can not only draw attention away from the natural shimmer of the eye itself but also detract from a particularly lovely shade of lipstick you may be wearing or the good bone structure of your face.

All eye shadows are best applied to skin that has a foundation on it— even if you don’t put foundation on the rest of your face. You will get a better, longer-lasting finish from them this way. And when using eye shadows, the same rules apply as on the rest of the face: A light color will make the part of the eye it’s on look more prominent, and a dark color will make it recede. Beware of frosted shadows if you are over thirty-five or have crepey eyelids. They can be very aging, and you will get better results from matt finishes.

 

The Eyebrows

The natural shape of an eyebrow usually goes with the face it is on. That is why it is usually a bad idea to alter yours greatly just because the kind of brow you particularly like looks good on somebody else’s face. What you can do to improve a shape is to pluck the extraneous hairs from your brows, giving them a cleaner line and making it possible to wear eye shadow successfully—eye shadow looks awful smeared over skin with tiny hairs sticking out of it. Another thing you can do is exaggerate the natural shape of your eyebrows slightly. An angular shape adds a feeling of planes to a round face; a sweeping shape looks good on narrow faces and also balances a very large mouth; and a rounded shape makes the eye look more open and young and is particularly good on a face with large eyes and a wide forehead.

If you have heavy brows, then pluck them to keep them tame, and let them be. If your brows are short and thick, don’t try to change them by elongating them on the sides, until you have taken a long, hard look at them and decided that that is really what you want to do. This shortened brow is a favorite of many models, because it gives surprise and a youthful look to a face.

How to Pluck Your Eyebrows

Before you begin, brush them first one way and then the other to remove any loose hairs or makeup, and clean the skin around the eyes thoroughly. Now put moisturizer in the area, before you reach for the tweezers. Brush your brows into shape and take a good look at them. Start by removing stray hairs between the brows and the stragglers that have nothing to do with the main body of the eyebrow. But never pluck from above the eyebrow. And always remove only one hair at a time, pulling it in the direction in which it grows. Work carefully, from the lowest hairs upward, clearing away the unnecessary ones. When you have finished with one brow, apply antiseptic or a simple toner to it before going on to the next one. This will help soothe the irritated skin. Don’t try to apply makeup for an hour after plucking ends.

The shape of a brow then can be accentuated or the density filled in, using a sharp eye pencil in a light shade—even if you have black brows you should choose an eyebrow pencil lighter than the natural hair color or you will make your face look older. If your brows are brown, choose a light brown color. The strokes from the pencil should be feathery and put on in the opposite direction to that in which the hairs grow. Then, when you’ve finished with the pencil, brush your eyebrows back in their natural shape to soften the strokes and make them look like natural hairs.

 

The Eyelids

Apply the lighter neutral shade or the lighter shade of colored shadow you have chosen to the section of the lid nearest the lashes, and then brush it out, fading it away to nothing toward the eyebrows. Now you can add the darker neutral in the socket to define the shape. There are lots of tricks you can play here with colors and light and dark to enhance the look of your eyes, make them look bigger, and so on.

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