Glitterati Cognoscenti
When I was growing up, we never had tinsel on the family Christmas tree. My mother, a graphic designer, thought tinsel was tacky--almost as bad as flocking, which was the kind of thing only people with plaid sofas had in their homes. Secretly, of course, I have always wanted tinsel, and I still do, even though I’m now old enough to agree with my mother that it’s about as sophisticated as the mica-flecked ceiling of a ‘60s tract house.
In my quasi-rebellious spirit, I ventured out last winter to buy a pot of loose red glitter from Make Up Forever, which I wore at the corners of dark eyes on several winter occasions, usually paired with the most serious black outfit I could pull together--not wanting to look like a total flake. It worked splendidly, creating just the right kind of stylish, skeptical holiday chic, and making my eyes something of a useful conversation piece at all of the obligatory parties.
Emboldened by that success, I looked around this year and found that, lo, glitter is everywhere. And it’s no longer that teeny-bopper pixie dust that’s been all over the place for the last few years--the sticky, gum-scented, spray-on chrome dandruff that is about as classy as, well, tinsel. The new glitter arrives in startling hues and subtle, precious textures, mature forms of the medium that work more like brush-on jewelry than makeup.
Sparkly lips have always been a difficult proposition. To date the glitter flecks have been either so chunky that they provoke female relatives to try spitting clean the corners of your mouth at the Thanksgiving dinner table, or--at the other end of the spectrum-- well, I firmly believe that anyone who isn’t Angie Dickinson should be arrested for wearing frosty lipstick.
The compromise lies in Smashbox’s Smashing Spark lipstick, which provides a fine, dense layer of fairly coarse glitter in a pleasingly thick, clear base. It doesn’t color the lips, but provides an intriguing quality of low-level sparkle, more a dramatic light effect than a color or texture--like the disturbed surface of a lake by moonlight. For day, Lanc0me’s holiday line includes an ornament-shaped tube containing an excellent Lip Brio gloss called Pierre de Lune, with subtler but equally unprecedented light effects, like something out of a Vermeer portrait.
If you’re feeling particularly warm, cozy and sweet, Perscriptives’ Glitterati clear lip gloss is smooth-textured and flecked with near-microscopic bits of red and gold, a good thing to wear while you’re home on Christmas Eve untangling strands of Christmas lights. For that matter, Clinique’s holiday Sugarplum line includes nail varnishes dense with pigment and glitter. Sugar Plum and Cherry Ice really do make toes look like sugar-coated fruit, and just the thing to have while stretched out sipping eggnog, drinking in pine scent and nodding off to Johnny Mathis records.
Perhaps that scene’s too cute for you, or the holidays just make you a little schizo. Might I suggest M.A.C’s pots of glitter and shimmer? They come in singles and holiday sets, collections of vials that look like paint kits for model cars in extraordinary, melancholic shades of opal, amethyst and pewter. If you’ve any experience painting toy soldiers, you could really turn yourself into quite the theatrical work of art with these. Even if you don’t, you can still manage to get yourself dolled up dramatically enough to scare the little children at the “Nutcracker” matinee with a flashing glance of your fearsome beauty.
A few of the season’s glittery tones are subdued enough to last until the spring thaw, particularly the abundance of new golds. Being blond, I’ve always lusted after true gold tones, and I hate to think of all I’ve plunked down for “gold” eye pencils and nail lacquers only to find them a dull, greenish brown. Fortunately, the makeup elves have been busy inventing formulas that shine in ways seldom seen outside of mythology. M.A.C’s Bee Dust combines a pale, fine-milled glitter and iridescence for dusting on honey-colored shoulders, while Estee Lauder’s Blushlights Creamy Cheek Color in Pearlshimmer is a light-gold all-over highlighter, rather than the usual bronze hue, and lends a pale, Apollonian glow to whatever regal bone structure you’ve got. Ellen Lange’s pair of tinted/textured skin treatments, VELVETvinyl, comes with a matte or glossy finish. The effect is a warm, hazy, golden glow, leaving you looking much like a luminous art-nouveau nymph in a Maxfield Parrish poster. And for about the price of a box of golden, cream-filled Twinkies, Wet ‘n Wild’s splendid new Crystallic nail polish in Yellow Gold creates a finish that would twinkle King Tut’s toes.
My single favorite product of the season is a basic black eyeliner pencil from Nars that is laced with winking flecks of gold. It’s a simple item: the soft pencil creates a kohl-like, Cleopatrine effect, the fiery dashes of metal twinkling out of the darkness on an almost subliminal level. You don’t really need to wear anything else, but if you do want to go to town, the glitter pencils are also available in taupe, pink, peach, lavender and silver, and are accompanied by a line of dark eye shadows (black with green, red or blue glitter). They’re in a worldly, debauched palette that makes me think of Glenda Jackson in “Women in Love,” during that bedroom scene in the Swiss chalet right before Alan Bates wanders off to die broken-hearted in the snow.
Don’t tell me you thought the holidays were always cheerful. In fact, if you’re smart, you might do well to gird yourself with mood-changing glitter nail polish from Toma, just to take your own temperature from time to time. It fades from magenta to pale pink, or deep purple to silver, depending on your degree of melancholia or cheer--or simply whether you’ve been recently engaged in a snowball fight or a furtive, cider-induced grapple under the mistletoe.
Not every holiday moment is psychodynamic, of course. Sometimes you just feel merry. For the proverbial lips-drawn-up-in-a-bow, or the Mrs. Claus Geisha look, M.A.C’s new Hollywood Red is a cheerful, vivid cerise infused with gold sparkle. But it’s only available this winter, and only at the company’s new outlet on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. That’s not a bad thing, mind you: Some perfectly wonderful looks are best doled out sparingly, or even just once.
For example, my pick for the ultimate New Year’s Eve eyes: a black-and-silver eye shadow duo “Ooh & Aah” from the Orange County-based company Too Faced (whose motto is “Why be pretty when you can be gorgeous?”). The silver powder is so dense and shiny, it’s as close to chrome-plating your eyelids as you can get, and the black powder with a silver fleck works as either shadow or liner for accent. This, in other words, is not your mother’s tinsel. If this eye shadow were a dress, you’d be able to wear it maybe three times in a lifetime, that’s how great it is. You may balk at purchasing makeup so, well, perishable, but think of it this way: It will cost less than a bottle of champagne, it will last twice as long and it won’t give you a hangover.
