Japan, Korea and Taiwan have been making some super cute, funky, and pretty make-up for the last while. I’ve noticed that here in North America and especially Canada, we are just starting to see the brands. Asian make-up packaging are a bit different, so are the scents and formulations. And then there are the trends: BB creams to compliment fair complexions, and false lashes to make eyes look doe-like…etc. There is definitely a market for these kinds of aesthetics over seas but what about here? Does Toronto’s westernized/multicultural demographic make Canada the next big market for Asian make-up companies?
Typical examples of Japanese and Korean cosmetics…I want all of these…they are just too cute!
It seems like we are fair game to international corporations that need to expand to survive in this global market. Already Face Shops have sprung up everywhere, not just in the Asian malls north of Toronto, but are now in almost every mainstream mall, and just the other month, another Korean make-up heavy weight Holika Holika set up a boutique on Queen Street west. I have yet to see really the public response, but throwing Asian make-up brands at the mainstream market without any introduction doesn’t seem very intelligent. Face Shop for example had to buy out Canadian company Fruits and Passion here in order to set up shop. Already they are not starting off with the most clean image as some Canadian consumers see the pop up stores as an invasion rather than them “sharing the goods” with us! Even myself, with my Asian heritage and knowledge of cosmetics, I still find it difficult to just adopt everything the Koreans are making, just for the sake of trend or readiness.
This brand is HOT in overseas markets. Now they have popped up here, on funky Queen West. If only their customer service was better… 😦
On the other hand, I guess we should be happy now that we have easier access to what is on trend at the moment, the only problem is that Face Shop make-up gives my skin allergic reactions. My skin is sensitive, so I can’t slather on things with 10 different chemical names on it! Perhaps these big make-up companies can stop working on gaining capitol on trends for a second, and work on better quality and formulations of their make up and skin care? It is not too much to ask…and consumers in any part of the world’s market can relate to this need and we deserve it too.
A lot of people are ready to compliment me on my make-up application skills but also with adding the side comment that it’s easy when I have perfect skin anyways. This is not true. My skin is super dry, I have to moisturize like crazy, and I do get breakouts occasionally. But when I apply make up, I do it in a way that hides or detracts from my flaws, and then accentuates the parts of my face that I do like. But a lot of mistakes that I notice in people’s overall make up look can be summed up in skin care and application. You need to perfect the two of these factors to find the right products for your face…and show off what you love about your face.
Common Visible Mistakes:
1) Putting on too much foundation mixed with oily combination skin, mixed with cakey powder to set. I’ve seen this on really pretty young women and almost want to sit them down, wipe off what they are using and reapply it myself. It totally distracts from their great facial shape features, because the skin texture is so wrong. The look is very bumpy, and cakey, it leaves a lot of pores visible, and blemishes are also still visible because of bumps. Uneven foundation is visible everywhere, because foundation builds up in dry areas and cracks, and literally slides off of oily areas.
thick icing on a cake: delicious. Thick foundation on the face: disastrous!
The ways to fix cakey foundation is to first examine your skin type. If you have oily skin, maybe you can skip foundation and powder and go straight to a 2 in 1 cream formula, reducing the layers of make-up needed. Another thing to do is to not use thick foundation as a concealer. If you have blemishes, try to heal them, and cover that area with a thin layer of concealer. Dry flakey skin needs exfoliation. Doubling the foundation is just a bad idea. The bottom line is less is more. You want your real skin to shine through, but piling on the foundation looks just like that. A huge mess on an otherwise pretty face! I know you’re thinking I’m stating the obvious, but a lot of girls don’t really LOOK at their finished made up faces. Examine your skin type, and take care of its needs accordingly.
2) Over done/Undone Brows
I had a really cute co-worker once who was into photos. The only problem was one of her friends took and over exposed photo of her (too bright), and in effect, erased the fact that she had very light, undefined brows. So in the photo she looked browless! That sent her to the nearest Sephora to get a brow pencil. But what she also should have done, was a bit of grooming as well plucking stray hairs, to have a base shape of brow for the pencil to go on top of. But on the other spectrum, over defined brows are not appealing either, even though there was a make-up trend recently on thick defined brows were more youthful (think retro Brook Shields), but in my opinion, nothing beats a balanced brow treatment. The lesson is not to ignore your brows…they frame your eyes which are in essence the most beautiful soulful part of your face…
See how she is famous for her brows? Bold brows work for her, but I still prefer balance.
3) Harshly lined eyes:
Eye liner is something I love to hate. The eyeliner pencil around the eye can turn very dated 80’s for some reason…I think it is the harshness of it. Not to be confused with liquid liner that creates bold lines and shapes, but the ubiquitous black pencil eyeliner that signals the uninspired lining of the eye can look unnatural, and I feel can age a person. My trick is to smudge it, and use with darker shadows, to hide the linear quality of pencil lines. Another trick is to just use black eye shadow and a fine brush to line eyes.
4) Not enough make-up:
I’m never an advocate for looking like a circus clown, but the reverse problem is not wearing enough make-up, which defeats the purpose of wearing make-up. A beautiful cobalt blue eye shadow, lining and accenting the upper eyelid is stunning, but without face foundation and a loose powder to set, the eye colour doesn’t pop, and can easily slide off the face long before the end of the day. The lesson is that beautiful make-up work in any area, needs a base of ample make-up application, or else, it’s quite pointless to even try.
5) No blush
We are living in hectic time crunched times. Also I know our make-up budget is often limited. So what is the first makeup item that gets skipped? Blush. I used to always skip blush when I was a in my twenties. The reason being that I thought it looked too done up. I liked a pale, mal-nurished look (hey, I was a weird art student!), but not anymore. Now a days, I feel blush really puts a finishing touch to a nice make-up application. And it is super pretty to have colour on the cheeks. So don’t skip this…
Gwenyth Paltrow is perfectly blushed in the movie View from the Top. This was the first time I noticed how blush can really make a difference.
There is something that is not often talked about in the make-up world, or actually should I say, over looked: and that is the sad fact that almost all bold lip colours are made up of heavy toxic chemicals and metals, some trace, and some not so trace. The bottom line though, is that it’s in there, and that wearing a fashionable shade of red, or the current trend of fushia, is probably loaded with not so great stuff.
the classic bold red lip.Lorde made fashion waves with her bold dark lips recently…
When I was younger, say ten years ago, I would always wear lipstick. After using the restroom, I would wash my hands and reapply that creamy stick, covering up my natural lip colour. It looked good, so I did it, ignoring the fact that lipstick gets everywhere, on clothes, on coffee cups, on ciggy butts. But the place that it was probably getting into the most was my stomach when I inadvertently ate it. There are statistics out there about the staggering amount of lipstick a woman ingests over a year, and over her lifetime and it’s gross. But we don’t need statistics to use our common sense and know that we are eating it. Anything on our lips eventually makes its way to our stomachs. It’s on our mouths after all. Which is why these fashionable bold lip colours are kind of scary to wear if you want to think about it. You don’t ever want to eat lead, or mercury, or cadmium, but it’s in almost all lipsticks. Just do the foil test to see this in your favourite lipstick shade.
My suggestion is is that if you’re not going to a red carpet event, do we really need bold lips on a day to day basis? Probably not. Why not wear a tinted lipbalm? Sure, it’s usually very sheer, and less noticable, and less fashionable, but it’s healthier for your lips. Since I stopped wearing lipsticks, my lips have naturally turned more pink, meaning I don’t actually need thick lipsticks to put colour into my lips. Also, I barely need chapstick because my lips stay so moist, even in the winter! I’m a bit of a crafter, so I made my own tinted lipbalm made with coconut oil, cocoa butter and beeswax, coloured it with a bit of fushia mica, and what I got was this:
Lot’s of colour in tinted lipbalms, without all that gunk…
So pretty, no?
Am I going back to toxic lipsticks and stains? Yes, it is fashionable, and unavoidable, but for day to day, I got this moisturizing tinted lip balm to carry me through!
Dreamy Reveries: a journal of make-up and fashion 