Capturing Head-to-Toe Look of the ‘80s

Makeup Mania

Girls just wanna have fun. But when Cyndi Lauper says so in her pop song, she doesn’t itemize the things girls do for fun. Here’s a partial list: wear makeup, worry about wrinkles, work out and test new shampoos.

Lauper’s makeup man, Patrick Lucas, as well as experts in all the other categories mentioned above, have been in and out of town recently to talk about the latest thing in their businesses.

For Lucas, it’s plaid. He’s drawing playful plaid-pattern eye-shadow effects on Lauper--bold plaids that drift down to the cheekbones.

“Cyndi wears plaid makeup when she wears plaid clothes,” he explains. “She likes Day-Glo colors. But for every day, a woman could use much subtler colors. Tones of pink, maybe.”

Lucas was in town to supervise Lauper’s look for the recent American Music Awards show. In addition to his work with plaid, Lucas is giving new meaning to eye liner. He lines the eye just above the lashes, as usual. But he doesn’t stop there. He stretches the line from temple to temple and straight across the bridge of the nose--like a pair of wraparound sunglasses.

Novices should use a sheet of construction paper as a guide, he says, and work with a cream-stick eyeliner, then smudge with a cotton swab to soften the effect.

Lucas sees his makeup as an ‘80s version of body painting, which was part of being a hippie 20 years ago.

“Now it’s done in softer colors for a softer look,” he says. “It used to be way-out. Now it can be subtle and believable looking.”

After more than a decade of makeup artists telling women to use sponges when they put on foundation, Lucas says he applies it with his fingers, a technique that he first noticed in Japanese makeup studios.

“It gives a more natural look, not as thick and matte as you get with a sponge,” he says. “It lets some of the freckles show through.”

Lucas also suggests wearing face decals as cosmetics. For Lauper, he says, he cuts colored paper into small geometric shapes and uses the shapes to build little houses and cars on her face. He attaches the pieces with eyelash glue.

While he and she were traveling on Ozark Airlines recently, Lucas says, he found a whole new sort of makeup kit. “They were giving out play sets for children to use on the plane,” he recalls. He took one for himself, and inside he found decals of wings and planes.

“Don’t you know I had them stuck on Cyndi’s face in no time,” he says.

A Line Coach

Compared with the playfulness of the Lucas and Lauper approach, cosmetics are no laughing matter at Estee Lauder. The beauty conglomerate is introducing its newest product, Line Preventor.

The product is an adjunct to Lauder’s Prescriptives skin-care line. It is a hydrator to use twice a day--under or instead of a moisturizer. It’s an optional component. Or, as the Lauder team might prefer to call it, a booster shot to the original prescription.

If nothing else, it may represent a new way of marketing skin-care products.

“Women can’t be bamboozled into buying $150 worth of products as if that’s the only way to have a good complexion,” Morris Herstein, Lauder’s vice president of research and development, says.

“Five years ago they were looking for a rigorous regimen. Now they want a little more leeway.”

In a study made while researching the new product, Herstein says, he found that the No. 1 skin-care concern of women is preventing lines from forming on their faces. They’re working against the genetic clock and the wear and tear of outside elements, Herstein says.

But the 14 years and $1 million reportedly spent to develop Lauder’s new product confirmed that diet is as potent an anti-aging aid as any skin-care product.

“A lower-calorie diet means that you don’t consume as much energy-metabolizing food,” Herstein says. “One result is that a cell doesn’t work as hard, so it lives longer.”

Herstein also points out that a cell lasts longer when its natural supplies of moisture and collagen are protected. He says Line Preventor helps provide that sort of protection. Priced at $40 for what the Prescriptives people call a two-month supply, it is available at Robinson’s.

An Exercise in Exercise

Barbara Pearlman, national director of Elizabeth Arden’s exercise program, says the worst mistake she sees women make in an exercise room is working with unbending knees. “It puts too much stress on the knee,” she says. “If you work with locked knees and you haven’t injured yourself yet, you will.”

Other don’ts on Pearlman’s exercise checklist include jerking motions, relying on tennis or other stop-start games for a complete form of exercise (“be more consistent and fluid in your motions to tone muscles properly”) and following the no-pain, no-gain approach to getting in shape.

“Pain is a red light,” she says. “Knee discomfort, swelling ankles and lower-back pain are signs that you’re doing something wrong. When you feel pain, stop doing that movement for a few days while the body repairs itself. If you go back to it, start slowly and carefully.”

She calls getting in shape an evolution, not a revolution. And she warns women: “No one has time for exercise. You have to make time.”

The best thing about weight training is the way it can tone and firm a woman’s upper-body muscles, Pearlman believes. But she says weightlifting is not a necessary part of a shape-up routine. Her ideal is a ballerina’s body. Traditionally, ballerinas maintain muscle tone without lifting weights.

At Arden’s Beverly Hills salon, where there are 30-minute and hourlong workouts with no more than five students in a class, the program includes modified ballet and yoga movements for stretching and running in place for an aerobics segment. Pearlman also advocates brisk walking or swimming as other alternatives.

“Do at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise at least four times a week,” she says.

Sweat may be in style in workout studios these days, but Pearlman says “sweat need not be the reward for a good workout. How much you sweat is related to your weight and the amount of body fat. Overweight people will perspire readily. Not everyone else will.”

There is one easy way to tell when you have over-exercised. “If you feel enervated afterward, you’re pushing too hard.”