The Makeup Mole

I’m sorry to devastate you all, but I heard a rumour swirling around on Twitter yesterday, and checked it on the website today – and it’s true! MAC’s amazing Blushcremes are no more.

Devastation is not the word! What shall I do without them? I have almost all of them and was planning to breeze into MAC at some point for the last couple I don’t own, only to find out they’ve gone to the great Makeup Box in the Sky. Oh Ladyblush, Pleasureful and Posey, what shall I do without you? Not to mention Cheery, Cherche and Laid Back. My clients’ cheeks will never be the same. If you have them I suggest you guard them jealously (because if I find out their location, I could well be coming over to do a midnight raid on your makeup stash. You have been warned).

Because this is the site with no shame, and because I haven’t had any cheesily fabulous 80’s music on here for awhile, here’s some Spandau Ballet to ease you into this season’s hottest trend for holiday parties – Gold.

Now that I’ve blown your mind with some feathered hair and ostentatious guitar chord playing (check around the 1.23 mark if you’re into that sort of thing), it’s time to get down to business, how to shimmer like a star this Christmas.

The best way to wear golds is generally on the eyes – although this season there are some ace gold nailpolishes around too (but more on them later).

Gold suits every eye colour and in fact every skintone, and metallics in general are huge this season.

My fave way to wear gold on the eyes is to layer a cream with a powder, and for full-on Midas eyes you can’t really go past Illamasqua’s Solstice Liquid Metal with Pure Pigment in Marvel. This is what Alex Box used to create the Golden Goddess look for the Myer show in Sydney this year, and I can attest to its – well, golden-ness. I love these because the gold isn’t too yellow and fake looking, and they have a burnished quality when they catch the light (golds that are too fake and yellow looking make me feel, quite frankly, ill. So cheap and nasty!)

If you fancy something a little less full-on, Laura Mercier does a lovely gold metallic crème eyeshadow in, aptly enough, Gold, and Chanel do a beautiful gold powder eyeshadow. It’s also, funnily enough, called Gold.

There are a few tricks to making metallics work. Firstly you need to apply your shadow, then line your eyes right at the base of the top lashes with a black liquid liner or gel eyeliner. This defines the eye and makes it much more party-worthy. Black or brown pencil liner on the inner rims is optional, depending on whether you really want to get your sexy on. I like MAC’s Boot Black liquid and Bobbi Brown’s Black Ink gel liner for this purpose. You can either just do a wash of gold on the lids, or you can use a nice matte brown shadow to wash into the crease to give some good depth and definition (I’m currently loving NARS Bengali as a great all round chocolate brown eyeshadow). Two coats of your favourite mascara (my current fave mazzie is L’Oreal’s Volume Million Lashes mascara for a party lash), and false lashes are optional but always a winner for parties. MAC and Shu Uemura are great for expensive ones, Ardell if you’re saving your pennies.

You can keep the rest of the face simple by using the minimum of foundation and powder, some bronzer and keep the lip a delicious nude. I love YSL Rouge Pur in 132 a gorgeous golden pinky beige. Golden-beige gloss on top, something like Chanel’s Beige Guitare.

Nails

Nails are also a key place to go for gold. Myface L’il Bling is an amazing new range of metallic polish, and their gold polish is particularly lovely (it’s called Gilt-y). For the ultimate gold nail though you should check out Nail Rock. Nail Rock are individual nail wraps in different patterns, including metallics, that you heat up with a hair dryer onto the nail. They do take a bit of getting used to, but for a true Midas touch, you can’t go past these. They are the creation of London manicurist Zoe Pocock and they last up to 7 days on nails and 8 weeks on the toes, plus they are inexpensive (£6.50 per set), so there’s no excuse for not going for gold. (Feathered hair and ostentatious guitar playing are optional).

www.illamasqua.com
www.chanel.com
www.narscosmetics.com
www.lauramercier.com
www.maccosmetics.com
www.yslbeautyus.com
www.myfacecosmetics.co.uk

Nail Rock are available from www.asos.com or Topshop, and Sportsgirl in Australia.

Let’s talk about eyebrows for a moment. This is one of those products that is so mind-bogglingly simple and effective that you think everyone must know about it, but I’m always amazed when I do private clients and they have never even heard of it.

Brow Gel is a tube like a mascara wand and tube that has a clear gel inside it, and when you run it through your brows it invisibly grooms them, gives them an oh so subtle sheen, and most importantly, holds them in place. Why is that so exciting I hear you ask? Well if you have to ask that, you apparently don’t need it. Some brows need it more than others. For those with sweet, tame little arches that look the same year in and year out and never need plucking, tending, pencilling or re-arranging, you can just stop reading now. I know there are a few of you lucky people out there. I am however, not one of them.

From having gigantor brows in the 80’s that needed a hedge trimmer to tame them, through to the 90’s when my brows all but disappeared when I plucked them all away (curse your elfin beauty in those CK Calvin Klein ads Kate Moss, it’s all your fault!), and now to the noughties when my brows have valiantly struggled to grow back but in sexy patches, I am one of those people who need brow help. Lots of it. Of the grooming and pencilling kind, every day, or else I look like a mad woman.

So brow gel is always in my kit, both personally, and professionally – and the one I love the most? MAC. They also do fancy coloured ones which I have, but to be brutally honest I don’t really use. Clear looks good on every brow colour, holds it in place and a tube will last you forever. So no more mad woman brows. The hedge trimmer is optional.

www.maccosmetics.com

MAC have just released their Christmas collections which are, quite frankly, always worth waiting for. This year is no exception with A Tartan Tale, packed to the brim with tiny, bite-size makeup goodies that make you want to go on a spending spree to end all spending sprees.

What I like about the MAC Christmas sets (apart from the super cute packaging) is for a makeup artist, they are a great (excuse?) chance to stock up on miniatures for your kit. The glitter, pigment and gloss sets are all a fab way to expand your kit, because, let’s face it, how often do you use that acid yellow glitter pigment? Maybe a couple of times a year. Does that mean you shouldn’t have it in stock? Hell no! What kit isn’t complete without a whole range of bonkers glitters and pigments, and MAC at Christmas is the perfect place and time to stock up. Plus as it is Christmas it’s a great chance to put the hard word on your nearest and dearest and explain the dire consequences of you going YET ANOTHER YEAR without your acid yellow glitter pigment. A scary thought, I know.

Their brush sets are also a great way for aspiring (and working!) makeup artists to expand their brush collections – and we all know you can never have too many brushes, don’t we? MAC’s brushes are very comprehensive, great quality and reasonably priced, so now’s the time to get your kilt on and check out A Tartan Tale.

www.maccosmetics.com

This week has been the start of the global fashion circus that rolls around the world from New York, then to London, then Milan and onto Paris before all the fashion crew get a 6 month rest, until it all starts up again.

I’ve been diligently keeping an eye on the trends coming out of New York, and right from the word go it’s been a surprising season beauty-wise, as it’s all about colour. New York is known for the usually “tasteful” (read “tame”) makeup and hair that struts down its runways. It is generally the most conservative of all the Fashion Weeks, but this week has been a showstopper in more ways than one. Rust red eyes, 70’s disco full makeup, fluoro pink lips, gold-grey lips and gold lashes, it’s all happening! And thank god, there has barely been a beige face in sight.

As always MAC are the go-to brand for the shows, (although NARS and Shiseido are making a few incursions onto the runways, which is nice to see). Here are some of my top picks so far from the shows – these are the looks that will be inspiring you in the season to come. Get ready to crack out the fun stuff ladies, it’s a makeup-fest!

Click on the pictures to download the Mac Face Charts

There is a bonafide revolution going on in makeup halls not just around the country, but around the world – Lipstick is Back.

Relegated to the status of a makeup also ran since, ooh, about 1999, when gloss usurped its position as women’s choice of lip enhancer, lipstick has quietly been easing its way back into our lives.

For me the tide turned on a shoot with David Bailey over a year ago – Kay Montano had these beautiful, creamy lipsticks from Bobbi Brown that she had been using on Nicole Kidman (aptly named ‘Creamy Lipsticks’), and I fell in love all over again with their delicious texture and the fact that they were moisturizing and had a sheen on them, but no stickiness. Gloss had been feeling a little passé for awhile, but this was the first time I had tossed an actual lipstick in my handbag in years.

My gloss bag at work started to shrink, and my lipstick palettes increase. I was using bolder colors at work – bright oranges, corals, fuchsia, red in all its permutations from deep wine to eye-popping cherries and strawberries.

Then came the launch of Chanel’s Rouge Coco lipstick in March this year with its ethereal image of Vanessa Paradis. Chanel’s Global Makeup artist, Peter Phillips, was so vocal in his championing of the forgotten makeup product, that it heralded something of a return. In the last couple of months it feels like every line is bringing lipstick back, and when the master of the fashion zeitgeist, Tom Ford, decides to launch a line of lippies, you know it’s a done deal.

My new-found love of lipstick has led me to try out quite a few lately, and my top winners at the moment are:

YSL Rouge Volupte – love the colours and they are super-creamy

Bobbi Brown – perfect for your natural lip shade but better

Chanel Rouge Coco – they really are as good as the buzz

Estee Lauder – if you’re re-investigating the classics, why not go to the source?

Illamasqua – For mouth-watering statement lip shades

NARS – from nudes to reds, his colour selection is unparalleled

MAC – like a lipstick candy store for grown ups

Lipstick is not just about applying lip colour – it’s an attitude, a feeling, a gift to yourself. It’s time (if you haven’t done so already), to make like a lady, and get yourself a lipstick.

I loved this show – incredible clothes (what we have come to expect from Alber Elbaz), and I found the aesthetic to be really interesting. This season the Lanvin team were playing with the idea that everybody is starting to look the same, which I think we can all attest to – the incredible rise in plastic surgery creating a veritable army of clone-like female “beauty”. By giving the models the same hair and a robotic black eye, Elbaz eloquently makes the point that fashion should also be about diversity. It might be beautiful, but surely we don’t want everyone to look the same? Nice to see a really interesting ethos behind a show. Hats off to Elbaz, Guido on hair and the redoubtable Pat McGrath on makeup (who, quite frankly, does it again).

For those viewers at home who would like to take this look for a spin, I would recommend:

• Bobbi Brown Black Ink Gel Eyeliner plus MAC Smolder pencil and MAC Carbon shadow to create the black structure to the eye
• MAC Pro glitter in Gold and Reflects Antique Gold for golden shine on the lid
• Benefit Hoola bronzer for contour under the cheekbones (no blush)
• Estee Lauder Vanilla Truffle lipstick for an expensive beige mouth, and Estee Lauder Clear Gloss for shine

Spring isn’t quite officially here, but as far as I’m concerned, its time to look ahead and think about bare legs, short skirts (yessssss! say all the men in London), and most importantly, re-think your makeup bag for the coming season. I call it a bonafide trend as of today, because I saw three ladies on the Tube in one morning wearing varying shades of violet on their eyes. So my top trend? It’s Lilac Eyes.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had (interesting, cough) true beauty trends – for a few seasons it’s been the same old stuff recycled again and again – natural makeup, perfect skin, smoky eyes, red lips – and much as I love those classics, aren’t we all just a little bit keen for something different?

I know I am, which is why I sat up just a little bit straighter when the genius makeup maestro Pat McGrath sent a bevy of beauties down the runway for Dior with gasp! lavender eyelids. Gorgeous, glowing, proper washes of Easter egg purple – it’s part of a bigger seasonal trend for pastels that I predict will be huge this season, as we all search for color to lift us out of (let’s be honest), 2009’s deep funk. The ubiquitous Ms McGrath even did pastel eyebrows yesterday for Balenciaga. Whilst I don’t see us necessarily sporting a pastel brow to herald in the warmer months, a pastel lid we can do. To the paintbox, ladies!

Lilacs I love

NARS Jolie Poupee duo – vibrant lavender and deep jewel toned purple. This is where NARS really comes into its own as a range – they have one of the most rockin’ colour selections anywhere. Colours you didn’t know existed let alone thought that you needed – that is until you headed down to your makeup counter.

NARS D. Gorgeous single eyeshadow  – a shimmery pale lilac. Worth wearing for the name alone!

Bobbi Brown Lavender and Lilac eyshadows, with Bobbi Brown cream shadow in Orchid. Yeeeeeeeaaaah. That’s what I’m talking about.

Becca Lapis Eyetint with Ametrine – this creates a more subtle, shiny wash of color that is so, so gorgeous on. Lapis is apparently a Limited Edition color so if you want it, you’ll have to be quick.

Estee Lauder single eyeshadow in Lilac – beautiful, does what it says in the box, shimmering lavender to make your eyes glow.

How to wear it

Although lavender looks gorgeous on every eye color, pastels can be a little hard to wear if not done correctly. The application part is easy – simply wash your chosen color from the lashline to the crease, with a brush or your finger in the case of a cream.

But in order to make it work, you need a very thin black liner along the lashes – like dental floss! Oh so thin. Liquid or gel eyeliner is more defined than a pencil. And lashes, lots and lots of lashes. You’re going to need a Bad Boy mascara, one that gives you lashes for days – not clumpy, not trampy, but ultra flirty and lots of ‘em. Go nuts. I am currently liking Lancome Hypnose mascara for this uber-sexy effect.

Without eyeliner and mascara you will look like an egg – but not of the Easter variety. Just an albino one. If you feel a bit naked under the eyes you can always softly smudge a nice chocolate pencil. MAC Coffee pencil is a good one.

Go easy on the foundation – heavy, mask-like base will quickly take this into Grannyland (and nobody really wants to go there). Myface foundation is lovely for light, everyday wear that still gives sufficient coverage. And no weird fake tans please – pastels and fake tan will make you look like the bonkers neighbour in There’s Something about Mary, and the Mole is never EVER going to tell you to look like that!

Blush is a must, a soft pink would be good, but nothing too cutesy. I like a pink with a little bit of gold shimmer in it – my latest fave for most skintones is Chantecaille powder blush in Laughter.

Although Ms McGrath went for the full magilla at Dior with a bright red lip, I would possibly choose something a little more understated if you’re just going out for groceries. I like a soft pink lip with a bit of brown (again to keep it out of the kindergarten, and make it pretty without looking like you should be sporting an Easter bonnet). Becca Sheer Tint lip colour in Gisella, Myface Vintage Pink lipstick, and the old classic Estee Lauder Crystal Baby lipstick are all good options. You may not have a Spring in your step yet, but at least it can be Spring on your eyes.