SPECIAL SPRING BEAUTY REPORT : Soft News : Hair, Makeup and Fragrances Echo Fashion’s New Lightened-Up Look
WHEN FASHION DESIGNERS show chiffon and lace for daytime, as they did at spring previews, the result is a season of softness--flowing lines rather than geometric shapes, subdued rather than garish colors. With this message of softness emanating from the fashion capitals--Milan, Paris, New York and Tokyo--beauty decision makers are responding in kind: Spring makeup, hair and even fragrances are softer, gentler and less restricted than at any time since the ‘60s, when flower children introduced the no-makeup look.
But the new soft look doesn’t mean no makeup. Paradoxically, to achieve a softer look, women may find themselves wearing more makeup than ever before. What they wear, however, will be applied with a light hand and with precise attention to detail. The ultimate goal is to look refined --emphatically not bare-faced or unfinished, which was fashionable in the ‘60s and early 1970s. The pale lips, fragile eyelids and unexaggerated cheekbones that are the signatures of spring are carefully highlighted with new, more delicate shades.
The season’s beauty focus is on individuality, concentrating on facial features rather than on makeup or hair styles. Idiosyncratic characteristics are amplified rather than masked to allow an individual’s inherent beauty to come through. Women who have “quirky” features--freckles, full lips, thin lips--will not try to disguise them. Tyen, artistic director for Christian Dior cosmetics, says: “There is no contouring. No spots of color. When I look at a woman this spring, I don’t remember her color. I only remember her beauty.”
SUBDUED HUES COLOR THE NEW FACE
FOR ABOUT TWO YEARS, aggressively red lipsticks have been fashionable. This season, however, lipsticks in shades of almond, golden pink, dusty rose, even brownish-red, border on pale; yet these should never be lighter than natural lip tones. And after years of glossy lipsticks, matte finishes are in fashion. These “allow you to see natural texture and contours without the distortion caused by shiny, creamy lipsticks,” says makeup artist Marilyn Young of the Ole Henriksen salon in Los Angeles. In the past, although women rejected drying, matte-finish lipsticks, manufacturers found that adding moisturizing emollients to a matte-finish product was virtually impossible. Now, however, blending technology has been improved, permitting the introduction of new, oil-rich matte lipsticks.
When the lips are muted, eyes get the attention. This spring, eyelids may be shaded with as many as five different powders--sand, rose, honey, peach, sable, for example--but such amalgams are blended to produce a hint of gentle color. Surprisingly, the season of softness allows for a variation that strongly emphasizes eyes with liner. Shiseido’s Parisian artistic director, Serge Lutens, for example, is showing an obvious, dark liner on upper and lower lids with shadows that appear to lighten the lids slightly. Most American makeup artists, however, are featuring the look without liner, placing emphasis on lashes and brows. The eyebrows are left natural, yet tamed with new brow gels. Before mascara, lashes are softly curled; a new device called Lady Wink can be used as a cold or hot curler for long-lasting curve.
TOUCHABLE HAIR AT ANY LENGTH
THE NATURAL FREEDOM of very short or very long hair is an integral element of the soft spring look. Just as designers of beauty products are operating on the theory that a woman’s makeup should not be noticeable, many hairdressers are likewise saying that the healthy glow of the hair--rather than the style--is what’s fashionable. Geometrically structured haircuts--such as the sharply chiseled bob--have become passe. And now more than ever, black and Asian women will not alter their natural hair with gels and texturizers to conform to a largely Caucasian ideal. The point of the natural look in hair is to call attention to the eyes, an effect achieved by dense bangs, which skim the eyebrows, as well as hair brushed back and off the face. Long hair--straight, waved or curly--can be worn free-flowing. Or the hair can be pulled back into a chignon or ponytail to completely free the face of clutter.
“Short” this spring means hair cut no longer than earlobe length. If the style is a blunt page boy, hair should just graze the earlobes. Even newer is hair cropped to within an inch of its roots. This is “no-conflict” hair--tresses snipped into shape, then left to their own devices, framing the face rather than being noticed on their own. Sterfon Demings, educational director of the John Atchison salons in New York and Los Angeles, says that one of the most important aspects of the short style that he created, at left, is that it is a “low- to no-maintenance look. Women have better things to do with their time than worry about their hair.”
NEW TREATMENTS FOR ‘NATURAL’ SKIN
UNDER THIS SEASON’Ssheer makeup foundations and delicate, iridescent powders, the natural textures and tones of the skin are not hidden. Therefore, the newest treatment products are designed to make skin look very refined and flawless. But since consumers spend $3 billion annually on skin-care products, the Food and Drug Administration is constantly reminding the cosmetics industry that product promises of wrinkle-free, blemish-free skin won’t be tolerated. In response, in April, Ultima II will release The Moisturizer, an emollient cream for which the only claim made is that it will be regularly reformulated to keep up with changing technology. Consumers are left to draw their own conclusions.
A large number of other moisturizing formulas will be released this season. The impetus has come from the fact that the 30- to 40-plus crowd--who now spend the most money on cosmetics--are developing wrinkles. (Fine lines can be attributed to surface dryness, but deeper wrinkles are typically caused by aging and can’t be helped by moisturizers.) While most exfoliating products tend to dry the skin while helping to refine the surface texture, Dior’s new Exfoliant Rose, a gel with grains encapsulated in oils, is intended to lubricate as it exfoliates. Lancome’s Hydra-Bleu Cool Hydrating Masque and Princess Marcella Borghese’s Cura Natura--which looks like green caviar--are other new products purported to restore moisture to the surface of the skin. For oily skin, Max Factor offers the clay-based Incredible Blue Mask, which changes color as excess oils are absorbed.
SPRING SIGNALS A NEW, LIGHTER APPROACH TO FRAGRANCE
VIRTUALLY EVERY scent introduced for spring emphasizes subtlety. Advertisements for Red, the new fragrance from the makers of heady Giorgio, declare that “nothing so soft was ever so exciting.” Christian Dior, which introduced powerful Poison perfume two years ago, now produces Soft Poison, a “light cologne” version of the very successful original. Fred Hayman’s 273, developed by the former owner of Giorgio, is much more understated than his potent debut fragrance. And Listen, the first fragrance put out by music-industry mogul Herb Alpert, blends delicate notes of muguet with lemon and bergamot. Following a successful test run in Southern California that began in October, the scent, which a Listen representative describes as “whisper soft,” will be launched nationally in spring.
Even the House of Guerlain, which is probably best known for its intensely sensual scent, Shalimar, is launching a new soft perfume in Paris in June. The name, as yet undisclosed, will reflect the newly rediscovered virtues of low-key essences.
Just as there is a trend toward subtle lip and eye color that recalls elements of the natural look in ‘60s makeup, there is a renaissance of lighter fragrances with obviously natural notes--lily, lemon and herbal aromas, among them--that also were popular in that decade. The big difference now is that the new soft scents are among the most costly perfumes, and major companies are marketing them to an upscale audience. In contrast, many of the lighter scents of the ‘60s and early ‘70s were inexpensive fad items, aimed predominantly at the youth market.
When New York City’s Bloomingdale’s begins its tribute to California fashion designers and beauty products in April, it will introduce a new Max Factor fragrance, Jaclyn Smith’s California, an ultra-soft scent that joins the celebrity-signature fragrance category. The Smith fragrance will be available to the rest of the country--including California--in July. Before the scent’s development, consumers surveyed by Factor reported that they were tired of heavy fragrances and wanted a “soft and light scent.” Further, they described the former “Charlie’s Angels” star as “soft and feminine,” according to Sharon LeVan, Max Factor’s senior vice president of marketing. Thus consumer opinion directly influenced the softness trend.
The question remains, however: Will women respond at the cash register to beauty’s new soft wares? Will sales of red lipsticks and aggressive fragrances fall as consumer taste shifts to pale shades and mellow smells? Retailers are optimistic. Gary Cockrell, cosmetics buyer for both I. Magnin and Bullocks Wilshire stores, explains that the soft approach in beauty and fragrance is a result of a growing self-confidence among women. “Pale cosmetics are for a woman who is sure of herself and who is sophisticated enough to appreciate her own beauty,” he says. Michael Ziegler, senior vice president and general merchandising manager of cosmetics at Robinson’s, concurs, noting that he sees the season’s soft, natural look “as a form of enhancement, rather than an attempt to change the way a woman looks. Will women here go for it? Why not? Isn’t it very much a California thing to do?”
Styling: Karen O’Neil; models: Paula Thomas / It Model Management; Nancy Sheppard / Prima; Jacqueline Rabun; foot model: Susan McNabb / Prima; hair and makeup: Dominic Cervantes / Zenobia; additional hair: Sterfon Demings / John Atchison Salon, Los Angeles
