Beauty Squared Round-Up for November 23, 2014

Hello! There's a whole lotta beauty stuff to share with you this morning and I'm on my second cup of Yorkshire Gold, so let's do this! Hope you enjoy.

• Starting with a jolt, here's MUA Charlotte Tilbury recreates a starry-eyed look worn by Kate Moss. And I mean starry-eyed.
  
• What sort of beauty tips can you find in a 1932 beautician text book?
  
• Do you conceal your dark undereye circles? Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe none of us should.
  
• An interview with Frank Toskan, co-founder of MAC Cosmetics. If you love MAC, read this.
  
• A few weeks ago, we featured a Lisa Eldridge video where she did a Downton Abbey-inspired makeup look on Downton Abbey star, Laura Carmichael (she plays Lady Edith). In this video she takes that barely-there makeup look to an evening, red carpet look.
  
• Another video by Lisa Eldridge, this one a fantastic casually-chic evening look that looks great but doesn't look like you tried too hard.
  
• We all wash our hair, but how many of us are doing it correctly? Check out this Allure.com article about how to do it the right way.
  
• MUA Ashlee Glazer shows how to look holiday party ready in just 5 minutes, how to look great with a post-holiday party hangover, and how to look fresh after a long flight home for the holidays.
  
• Face mapping and how your breakouts are (may be) linked to your overall health and how to prevent them.
  
• 12 beauty products that can (almost) change your life.
  
• Here are some weird beauty tricks. Do you have any of your own?
  
• If you wear liquid or gel eye liner, you know how easy it is to mess it up, even if you've been doing it for years. Here's how you can fix it if you do.
  
• It's winter in Canada, so the air is colder (outside) and dryer (both inside and outside), and it's holiday season (food, drink, late nights, stress). Here are some beauty fixes to help you deal with the season. 
• How to fight dry lips, wine-stained teeth and everything else cold weather brings. 
• The end of liquid liner woes and how to achieve dewy skin in the winter.
  
• Alternative spa treatments (vibrating chairs, crystal healing, PEMF (electromagnetic energy)) that actually feel great.
  
• How to apply false lashes, step by step.
  
• How to get a sexy, youthful eyebrow, just with a spoolie brush and some brow gel.
  
• Makeup product names and marketing seem to be getting saucier and saucier. Remember when the name Orgasm (the iconic NARS blush) was risqué? Product names used to be Fire and Ice, and Dusky Heather while now more and more products have names like Snatch, Spunk, Bang, Perversion and Full Frontal.
  
• Four women have launched a class action lawsuit against Sephora after the disastrous 20% off sale a few weeks ago. The lawsuit alleges discrimination, that Sephora purposely blocked customers from making online purchases because they are of Chinese descent. 

Beauty Squared Round-Up - June 24, 2012

Here are some of the beauty-ful links we uncovered this week:

Dior releases a crackle polish? It's strange to see a top brand at the end of a trend, but their Golden Jungle Nail Effect might just revamp it. Check out these swatches.

UK Cosmo's Sarah Kwong got to experience a 1930's style makeover.

Five Things You Didn't Know About Sunscreen - some of these surprised (and scared) me. 

Elle Canada's summer beauty steals VS splurges.

Did you know that your teeth can suffer from exposure to excess chlorine?

Remember that old beauty rule about horizontal stripes making you look fat?

You maybe don't want to click through on this link about germs at makeup counters. 

Angelina Jolie as Maleficient in the updated version of Disney's Sleeping Beauty. There's a first photo here. 

Tips for melt-proof makeup.

30s style manicure

A Cutex ad from the 1930s

The other day I saw a story on Jezebel.com about how to do a 1930s manicure. I wondered about this as it had never occurred to me that 1930s women would've done anything that required how-to lessons. But reading on and doing some Internet research I discovered that the chic 1930s lady did do something really interesting with their nails. 

Dita von Teese with a 1930s style manicure

Ladies of the Art Deco and Great Depression era used to paint just the centre of their nails, leaving the half moon cuticle and tips of their nails bare. Towards the end of the decade, they left only the half moon cuticle bare and painted all the way to the tip. Colours ranged from corals and reds to greens and the popular shape was an almond shape. You can read more about it here.

I'm fond of vampy nails and unexpected colours like grey, bright green or orange lately and I've never had even a french manicure, so I thought I might try this edgy retro look. 

MAC Nail Lacquer in Vintage Vamp,
Sally Hanson Complete Salon Manicure Polish in Polar Bare
 and french manicure nail stickers

What you'll need:

• Base coat
• Bottom colour (a light shade like white or fleshtone)
• French manicure stickers (available wherever nail products are sold)
• Top colour (red, coral or burgundy if you want to keep it authentic)
• Top coat

The first step is to apply a base coat and allow it to dry. Then you'll want to paint your light shade all over your nail. You can use any light colour, sheer or opaque. Try a pearly pink, peach or white. I had hoped the white shade I'd bought was more opaque but it did what I needed it to.

Let the polish dry and then let it dry some more. You'll be putting stickers on top of the polish so it needs to be as hard as possible. 

Next, place your french manicure nail stickers - one on your nail tip and one along your half moon cuticle. This is much easier to do on your non-dominant hand so you might want to get someone to help you. I'm right-handed so the finished nails on my right hand aren't as clean as the nails on my left hand. This is probably something that comes with practice as those of you who do your own french manicures probably know!

Press the stickers down so they adhere to the skin and the nails as closely as possible. You don't want any of the darker shade to seep or bleed underneath the stickers. 

Your nails should look something like this once the stickers are in place.

Kinda cool-looking, right?

Apply the darker shade, overlapping the stickers slightly, with as many coats as needed to get the effect you want. Allow the polish to dry in between coats completely but after you've applied your final layer, you want it to almost completely dry before you remove the stickers.

This is my hand with one coat of Vintage Vamp applied.

When your nails are almost completely dry, carefully peel off the stickers. 

Here is my finished hand. I always end up getting polish on my skin but in the morning when I shower, it peels off. With a Q-tip dipped in polish remover I cleaned up the mess a little for the photos though.

It's a very cool look as well as being retro, although I bet no one would guess that it's retro.

I did a more traditional 30s manicure but of course, this look can be done with any combination of colours. What about using black as your base and green on top? Or yellow and orange? 

I love this look, what do you think?

C.

1920s and 1930s Make-Up

This summer I was challenged to come up with two retro looks - one for a coworker who was attending a 1930s themed fashion event and one for myself, for a friend's 1920s themed party.

I have a soft spot for history and when we were taught the basics of beauty through the years in make-up school, I absorbed it like a sponge and have never forgotten it. I love Sam from PixiWoo for her retro make-up looks and used her videos in my research such as this one for the 1920s look (sorry about the size of this video!):



Make-up in the 1920s was very basic so women did what they could. As is the case now, what was in vogue was the faces of movies stars such as Clara Bow and Louise (LuLu) Brooks. 1920s make-up was inspired by silent film where the face was used in lieu of voices to express emotion and make-up had to stand out on B&W film. 

Clara Bow

Louise Brooks

The flapper was the IT girls of the decade with her close cropped, bobbed hair, dropwaist dresses, long beaded necklaces or pearls and cloche hats.

Why so glum, Flapper girl? I covet your boots and adorable hair!

One of my favourite photos of all time.

Louise Brooks

1920s make-up basics:

• big, sad eyes
• low, straight, thin, dark brows
• pale, matte skin
• dark red, bow-shaped lips
• no blush

Me with my test flapper make-up

Me at the party
Taken by Beverly Wooding 

I have a face with strong features but I managed to get the 1920s look without too much difficulty.

Here's what I did:

I thinned my brows out as much as I was comfortable wearing (which wasn't anywhere near as thin or straight as they wore them in the 1920s) and used a dark brown powder to darken, lower and extend them. For my eyes, I used MAC's Smut eyeshadow in an oval shape but in the complete opposite way as I would normally apply it. Starting on my lid, I blended the colour up high in the crease and inner corner and worked it down at the outside of my eye to create a downturned, sad look. I smudged a soft line of Smut below my eyes, also pulling it down at the outer corner. To make my eyes appear larger I lined my lower waterline with Benefit EyeBright to make my eyes appear larger and added a little mascara, but not as much as I normally wear.

My base was as matte as I could make it (lots of powder) and I applied no blush or highlighter.

For my lips, I used MAC's Diva matte lipstick but first applied concealer to the each side of my mouth. The 1920s lip was known as the Bow, after Clara Bow and drawn well inside the natural lip line. Lip colours didn't bleed as quickly when done this way. I used a freshly sharpened lip pencil to draw the shape and then used a lip brush to apply the lipstick.

MAC Smut eyeshadow and MAC Diva matte lipstick

The 1930s look I gave my coworker Lindsay instruction for was inspired by this video from Helena Rubenstein and from Kevyn Aucoin's books. I think Marlene Dietrich was one of the most stunning women to grace the big screen and I have a huge retro girl-crush on her.

Can you see why?

Marlene Dietrich in The Scarlet Empress

Her face was the epitome of sculpted, otherworldly beauty with a good dose of androgyny as her face is almost handsome. She was in control of her own make-up and hair and worked mainly with directors, wardrobe stylists and technicians who knew how to make her look her very best onscreen.

Again, I went to PixiWoo for inspiration (sorry about the size of this video!):



Her high, thin, arched brows, sculpted bone structure, bedroom eyes and flawless skin were hallmarks of the 1930s look but it's easy just to focus on that face. Other beauties of the decade were:

Greta Garbo

Joan Crawford - look a brunette!

Joan Crawford again, this time as a blonde.

Carole Lombard (with Clark Gable)

The 1930s were softer in terms of hair and make-up than the 1920s. Advances had been made in beauty products, although they were still pretty basic. There had been huge advances in film though, in terms of lighting and cameras, so rather than the almost two-dimensional visuals of cinema in the 1920s, the 1930s gave us the beginning of Hollywood's Golden Age and the first of the incredibly glamourous movie stars.

This is another good video although it has no sound and the model has the perfect face for this type of make-up so it's easy to make her look like a 1930s film star.



The basics of the 1930s look:

• glamour
• shadow and highlight
• liquid eyeliner 
• high, thin, rounded eyebrows
• red lips
• sculpted cheekbones
• soft pink blush

I didn't do Lindsey's make-up but I gave her lots of instruction and here's what she did all on her own! She looks great! She also has a great face for this look - delicate features, a rounded face with short blonde hair to frame it. I don't know what products she used, but it appears she used a thin line of liquid eyeliner, a touch of blush and that fantastic red lipstick (it's MAC's Ruby Woo, she tells me).

Lindsey with her 1930s look.
Taken by Jonathan Loek and posted on BlogTO.

Another photo of Lindsey taken by photographer Claudia Hung can be seen here.

1930s make-up is much more flattering than the 1920s look but since both of these looks were meant for B&W photos and film, you can play with texture and modernize these both for today. Lindsey too didn't tweeze the life out of her eyebrows to get the perfect look but this is a look she could wear again on a night out.

Coincidentally it's been a summer for retro make-up looks - so much fun!!!

C.