Fashion : Stylists Put a New Face on Tricks With Makeup
Women who wish they could change certain features about their faces are starting to think of makeup artists in a new way--as experts who can offer very specific advice that can postpone cosmetic surgery.
How do you make lips look fuller without collagen injections, give eyes a lift without a surgeon’s incisions, diminish the effect of wrinkles and lines without a chemical peel? These are the sorts of questions modern makeup artists answer by putting into practice the latest tricks of their trade. More than ever, they say, makeup used the right way will erase years from a woman’s appearance.
A private lesson in how it is done can be an expensive proposition--an hourlong appointment, with a complete makeup application, usually costs $40 or more. So it is helpful to know ahead of time which expert to consult about which particular problem. And the experts all do have their special skills, just as restaurant chefs have certain dishes they prepare especially well.
Four Los Angeles makeup artists recently demonstrated the techniques they are best known for:
--Eugenia Weston of Senna Cosmetics, a Tarzana boutique, applies lipstick for maximum effect.
--Joanna Fradkin of the Pigments boutique in Beverly Hills shapes eyebrows to frame and balance facial features.
--Andrea Kessel, who is based in the Joseph Martin hair salon in Beverly Hills, enhances the natural features of women over age 40.
--Mary Brando of Vanity in Los Angeles teaches women to apply eyeliner in ways that seem to alter the shape of their eyes.
To create the perfect lips, Weston has developed a process that minimizes very wide shapes, or maximizes narrow ones. It involves several steps.
First, she covers the area around the lips with a jojoba-based cream to soften lines and help the lipstick adhere. For narrow lips, she blends an off-white color highlighter above the mouth only to create a light-reflecting area that makes the lips seem more prominent.
She outlines top and bottom lips with a pencil, drawing along the outer line of narrow lips, or the inner line of very full lips, rounding the line for a fuller effect on narrow lips, or making it slightly concave to cut in on very wide lips.
She completely colors the lips with the same pencil before she applies lipstick. The colors should match, she says. And she explains that pale colors minimize and darker colors maximize the fullness of the lips.
Weston applies lipstick with a padded lamb’s wool “smoothie” that looks like a small gumdrop on a stick and can be found in beauty-supply stores. It gives a more natural, matte finish, instead of a shiny one.
Bette Midler, one of her best customers, is also one of her ideal students. Following Weston’s direction, Midler makes the most of her full lips with a pale lip color applied for a matte look.
At the Pigments boutique, Fradkin tells clients their eyebrows are the most important feature of their face. Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor are two leading examples of famous brows that have enhanced a face.
Well-shaped eyebrows, tapered to form a near-straight line that extends to just beyond the eyes’ outer corner, can give droopy or hooded eyes an uplifted and pronounced appearance, Fradkin explains.
To shape a brow, she draws parallel lines along the top and the bottom of it, using an off-white color pencil. The top and bottom lines angle slightly upward and are about the same length. Then she draws a line from the curve of the temple to the top of the eyebrow, to tell her where the arch point should be.
Finally, with a taupe-colored pencil, she fills in the eyebrow, shaping it as she wants it to be, and clears away hairs that lie outside that ideal shape. Then she brushes the brow upward and trims the top hairs with a pair of fine scissors.
“A good rule of thumb is to tweeze from the arch out,” she says. “People think that tweezing close to the nose gives them a wide-eyed look but it is really just unnatural looking. Anything that doesn’t follow the bone structure is unflattering.”
For bare spots in eyebrows, and for very light-color brows, Fradkin fills in with a taupe pencil, using short strokes. She follows that by brushing the brows to smudge the color for a more natural look.
She uses the neutral taupe shade, by the way, even on dark brunettes. “If the color is too dark the eyebrow gets out of balance with the rest of the face,” she says.
Balancing the eyes with the rest of the face, and emphasizing their shape and color, is one of makeup’s primary benefits. Kessel, at the Joseph Martin salon, does this with a few well-chosen colors, lightly applied.
A number of her customers are over age 40. The natural lines and wrinkles in their complexions, their naturally lighter hair color and their softer-edged features look best when covered with a light-handed makeup, she explains.
The first step in her system for making up the eyes is to brush the lids with pale peach-color powder, forming a light-color background for shades to come. “The pale background makes the eye look bigger,” she explains.
Next she brushes a dusty rose shade into the crease of the eye and along the bone, and blends the color upward, toward the brow. She adds a bronze-color powder to the crease in the lid, and blends it. And she uses neutral-toned powder eyeliner, dotting it between the lashes and smudging it. She coats them with a soft, brown-plum mascara. She uses no dark colors and draws no solid lines, because both are harsh looking and add years to a woman’s appearance.
And she works with matte powders only. “Iridescents emphasize every line” she says. She also explains why her natural-looking makeup requires a number of steps. “What takes the most time is blending colors smoothly, to emphasize the contours or the bone structure and bring out the skin and eye colors.”
At the Vanity boutique, Brando is a master at applying eyeliner, a technique she uses to create all sorts of illusions. She uses dry powders, not liquid liners, because the liquid line tends to look dense and solid.
Extend a line beyond the outer edge of small, close-set eyes and they seem to become elongated, she says. Outline the corner of the eyes only, in a warm brown color, and narrow eyes suddenly appear rounder and wider. Draw a deep-colored line on the inner rim of the lid and protruding eyes seem to lose their bulging appearance.
Brando usually prefers eyeliners in neutral shades of brown that don’t compete with the eye’s color.
“I always say there are no unattractive women, only lazy women,” she says. “Everyone can learn how to apply their makeup to bring out their own best features.”
