The Science of Beautiful Skin

Having lived in Europe my whole life, I never really watched awards ceremonies before. It’s difficult to watch the Globes, the BAFTA’s or the Oscars because of the different time zones.
But now that I can watch these shows in real time, I get to share my comments—LIVE!
On the Golden Globes red carpet last Sunday, I couldn’t help but notice the comeback of two beauty trends: heavy make-up (see Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Claire Danes…) and nude make-up (see Nicole Kidman, Elle Macpherson, Heidi Klum…). Nude make-up is just boring and monochrome, so let’s talk about the return of the full face.

Take a look at Claire Danes for a sec:

She might be wearing the prefect minimalist dress for her body shape but she looked way too shinny and much older than she usually does. What happened here?

To me, this was a good example of someone who doesn’t know how to take care of her skin, and was badly advised by her make-up artist. This shinny face could have been prevented!!

There is no question her make-up was too strong with both heavy eyes and lips. There is far too much highlighter around the contour of her eyes and to make matters worse, I think she’s wearing the wrong colour concealer—it was way too pale. The purple accent that was used on the smoky eye was too sophisticated, it added depth in the wrong places and paired with the “classic” red lips the final look was too old school.

But what really killed me was her skin. The foundation had been totally absorbed and made her enlarge pores visible. This was just the wrong foundation for her.

Here’s what I think could have prevented this shinny look: if you have combination to oily skin, you need to be very strict with your beauty regimen; cleansing and balancing your skin should be your main focus. Before a big party, if it’s too late for a deep treatment, use a gentle exfoliation a couple of hours before putting on your make-up (one with glycolic acid or lactic acid, depending of your skin type) to remove all impurities, and dead skin cells and to help refresh your tone. Here on Claire, either a primer wasn’t applied or the cream underneath was too greasy. Always apply a primer to reduce the appearance of enlarged pores, and to absorb shine. It’s best to pick a primer that doesn’t have any light-reflecting pigments (one with light-reflecting pigments will increase the shine, obviously). And try to avoid too many lipids in your moisturizer, an oil-free moisturizer with Hyaluronic acid would be your best bet.

Of course, I couldn’t end this post without saying that Dermaglow happens to have a great moisturizer and primer for those 30+, that would have been perfect for Claire!

S.