Get coverage and colour therapy with these Spring cosmetics
YSL’s spring look is all about clashing pinks and oranges. The packaging is inspired by street art but looks more like Matisse’s gouache découpés, with strips bearing slogans pasted across YSL-branded wallpaper.
The limited-edition ‘I Have A Blush On You’ Face Palette, €55, looks tangerine in the pan but sheers to a flattering apricot with rosy undertones.
Orange and lavender don’t usually feature in smoky but look fresh contoured with a deep grey from the ‘Keep An Eye On Me Palette,’ €55. The steely shade is picked up in a trio of glossy La Laque Couture, €23, polishes that also include brick orange and pure white.
Get Georgia May Jagger’s awesome eye-liner wings with Dessin Du Regard Arty Duo, €21. This boldly-pigmented pencil has an angled applicator and lets you create a sharp line, give it depth of colour and then smudge it into perfect shape. Two shades, ‘Pink Graffiti’ and ‘Orange Graffiti’ terracotta, are new for this season.
The Babydoll Kiss and Blush Duo, €33, combines orange and pinks of various shades in one twist-up stick. The finish is satin and looks bold on the lips but sheer on the apples of the cheeks. Shade no.4, ‘From Me to You,’ and no.6, ‘From Prude to Nude,’ are on the natural end of the spectrum, employing beige and rose hues.
We can all do with a little joie de vivre in January and Laura Mercier’s new collection is packed with mood-boosting colour. Check out the three new shades of Mercier Lip Pencil, €24 — cassis, grenadine and orange — if you like to wear bright lip-liner as all-over matte colour. The Editorial Eye Shadow Palette, €45, joins the brand’s permanent line this week. The shadow’s formula contains mineral clays and comes in a mix of satin and matte finishes.
The palette includes two nudes, a powder blue, a denim and a charcoal. New-season shades of your favourite products are fun but it’s the limited-editions that make a collection cult. Windflush Colour Powder for Cheeks and Eyes, €38, is one such, a sheer peach baked-powder designed to give all skin tones a youthful touch of colour.
I’m not keen on peach for the eyes but it does give cheeks a healthy glow. Velour Lovers Lipstick, €30, now comes in five limited-edition metallics. New crushed pearl-pigments rather counteract the formula’s usual suede-like finish, but it retains its hydrating texture and antioxidant extracts. ’Happy,’ the ruby red, and ‘Joy,’ a deep pink, are super-pretty.
Clarins is very good at making application a cinch, as evidenced by the best-selling 3-Dot Liner, €26, and the precision brushes that come with their shadows. So if, after three years of playing with light and shade, natural-look sculpting still eludes you, the brand’s new Face Contouring Palette is worth a swipe.
Composed of three shades, it comes with a plush and effective blending brush. Even without this, the powder’s fibers are melt-on soft enough to make unsightly stripes an appeal to the possible. In a couple of helpfully-supplied steps, the cheeks and jawline are sculpted through contrast.
A final sweep of pink blush gives the whole like a radiant lift. The brand calls the colours universal but I think they best suits fair-to-medium tones. The shading bronze, in particular, looks too warm for porcelain skin.
Giorgio Armani tends to join new foundation trends late but the eventual offering always captures the best of the look. Luminous Silk is still one of the most beautiful brightening foundations, Maestro Glow Nourishing Fusion the silkiest of serum makeups and Designer Lift a superior smoothing-matte.
I knew Power Fabric, a fashionably tardy addition to the filmic but long-wearing makeup trend, would give great cover and feel like nothing. It really does and doesn’t. The brand does not describe this as HD makeup but the effect is similar. The highly-pigmented formula completely even skin tone with very little product, no primer or additional concealer required. Ingredients-wise, it best suits normal-to-oily skin.
It also provides broad-spectrum sun protection, though you would have to apply a substantial amount to get full SPF25 coverage. The finish is matte and the 12-shade range is very natural.
If I could change something I would make it alcohol-free, especially as the tenacity of the formula encourages all-day, everyday wear. Exposing skin to alcohol is drying and sensitising, though I recognise, as Armani must, that it gives foundations a water-light texture their customers love (Maestro Glow and the multiple beauty award-winning Luminous Silk both contain alcohol).
This brand is wonderful at producing lip makeup that improves condition while looking hot and while this is probably easier than doing the same for the complexion — lips, after all, take up minor and unblemished facial real-estate — it would be great if the entire Armani foundation family did the same.
Bareminerals is more famous for foundation than skincare but offers a couple of gems for dry skin, most notably the Mineralixirs 5-Oil Blend, €45. Brilliant Future Age and Defence Renew Serum, which launched this week, is also great for this skin type.
The formula is rich in antioxidants oils, the initial effect of which is temporary plumping and the diminished appearance of dry patches through makeup. They support the skin’s natural moisture barrier over time and, combined with anti-ageing peptides and less lubricating free radical-fighters like licorice, encourage healthy collagen production and skin-cell turnover.
The serum contains an especially high concentration of ascorbyl glucoside, a Vitamin C derivative, so will also improve pigmentation issues and natural luminosity with the additional use of broad-spectrum sun protection. The antioxidant mineral manganese is also prevalent in the mix, as is chai hu, a Chinese plant usually employed in liver detox products but with some capacity to sooth skin.
There’s a lot of mica, a light-reflecting mineral that has no skincare benefits but blurs imperfections. In this sense the serum can double as a brightening makeup prep, but it would be more of an ‘age defence’ if a potent antioxidant had mica’s senior spot on the ingredients list.
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