Recently Scarlett Johansson told Vanity Fair, “I know my best angles.” Exactly. Any successful model or actress knows her strongest features and how to work them in front of the camera. You too should be closely, intimately familiar with the unique strengths, challenges and charms of your face in order to know how to properly enhance it with makeup.
Knowing how, and where, to apply various makeup products on your face is the secret sauce of achieving that red carpet, camera loving polish. It’s how the gal with perfectly unoffensive and average features, someone you wouldn’t look at twice if you bumped into each other on a Saturday morning in your sweats at the neighborhood coffee shop, is transformed into another specimen entirely on screen or in a magazine. If you’re not convinced, take a peek at a few candid celebrity photos, the ones where they’re not wearing any makeup.
Engaging in a bit of self reflection on the face front allows you to pinpoint exactly where you should be focusing your efforts when you pull out the makeup case. To conduct a quick and easy assessment of your face, do the following:
- Pull your hair back and examine your clean, makeup-free face in a mirror lit with natural light.
- Note 1.) the condition of your skin, 2) the overall symmetry of your face, and 3) the strengths of your individual features. If you find it hard being objective, pretend you’re a scientist studying an anonymous subject.
- What are your top positives? Perhaps you have beautiful skin, an elegant jawline and expressive, doe eyes. Great eyebrows. Elegant cheekbones. A distinctive nose. You name it. And don’t be modest–or mean.
- Once you have consciously identified your favorite attributes, write them down on a piece of paper. Jot down, next to each feature, what you can do with makeup to make it even more standout. Coat my lashes with extra layers of thickening mascara to highlight my eyes. Contour my cheekbones so they look more dramatic. Find a lip shade that flatters my skin tone and makes my lips pop.
Repeat your assessment from time to time, and use the results to smartly steer you to those products, shades and strategies that will best optimize your unique, one of a kind beauty.
Constance Dunn is a beauty researcher and author of the presentation guide Practical Glamour (2010). //practicalglamour.org/