My Most-Requested Makeup Look Ever

I went to Mykonos last week on a press trip with Space NK and, because I had more than my usual eight-and-a-half minutes to get ready, I ended up looking much better than usual. So much better, in fact, that my Instagram following did a sort of collective gasp and then immediately inundated me with questions about what I had done to my face.

Never before has my makeup caused such a reaction. I don’t know whether to feel pleased or insulted. Have I managed to somehow pull off a masterpiece of makeup artistry? Or is it that I usually look so uneventful that any sort of effort above baseline is a talking point?

I’m going to go with the first option. And so here’s how I pulled off the makeup masterpiece. I reckon it took me a full twenty minutes, which is twelve minutes longer than my average routine so no wonder it turned out so amazingly well.

Skin

I have been maintaining a lovely, low-key sunkissed tan on my face by using Vita Liberata Deep Moisture Face Tan every other morning. If you want my new, genius hack for how to apply it in a no-fuss manner then make sure you read last week’s post here.

That was in the morning. This was the evening, and so onto cleansed and serum-ed skin I applied my newfound beauty love, Kosas Dreambeam SPF30, which is a tinted sunscreen with excellent blurring and glow-giving properties. It really is brilliant, without too much obvious spangle or sparkle and with a bouncy, plumptious sort of texture.

Buy Dreambeam here

I mixed together both shades to get my sunkissed base - this is a great product for anyone who wants a good “all in one” primer that helps to perfect and polish before you’ve even gone in with your base…

I wanted some extra coverage when it came to the aforementioned base, because we were off for posh dinner, and so in I went with Sweed Glass Skin foundation in shade 6, which is my “summer shade”, using fingertips to quickly blend. I much prefer this foundation applied with fingers rather than a brush, and I think that it’s a must that skin is really well prepped with a moisturiser or moisturising primer. It’s then glowy and perfecting and utterly gorgeous. On drier skin, applied with a brush, I think it feels heavier and less pliable, or blendable. It’s all in the application method but Glass Skin has become one of my most-used foundations, not least because the small, no-frills bottle is lightweight and perfect for when I’m away from home.

Buy Glass Skin Foundation

I used a concealer under the eyes and around the nose. The Sweed foundation is actually comprehensive enough in terms of coverage to completely do away with the need for concealer, if you build it up adequately, but I apply it in quite a light layer and so welcome a bit of extra help around the eyes. Now here’s a notable thing: the KOSAS product I used on my undereyes that I thought was a concealer was actually a colour-corrector!

KOSAS do a (very good) normal concealer, and this corrector product looks almost identical in terms of packaging. But what I noticed about the Revealer Extra Bright Color Corrector (before I even knew that’s what it was) was that it added this tremendous amount of radiance to the undereye area. The skin looked “lit” with a grown-up, sheeny-sheer luminosity. It had just enough peachiness to knock out the blue tones in the undereye shadows and just enough concealer pigment to also help mask them a bit. Similar to a concealer, but in many ways so much more clever.

KOSAS Color Corrector

The texture of the Color Corrector is juicy and smooth and the whole product is so beautifully conceived that it might just make me rethink my addiction to Armani’s Power Fabric Concealer. (Another glorious second-skin sort of product for sliding on over dark circles.) I used the shade “Illusion” in the KOSAS corrector - it’s £26 here.

I’d love to say that’s the skin section of the makeup look done and dusted, but there’s more. This is what happens when I have zero commitments: I start using more than five makeup products in one go. Dangerous.

I applied a bit of contour next. I am not one of these people who goes in for the whole chiselled look, where you paint on dark stripes along your nose and completely change the way your face looks (no shade on that, by the way, I just can’t be arsed with it and anyway, everyone in my village would mock me relentlessly). But I am partial to a little bit of shadow under the cheekbones to add a hint of polished glamour. Especially if I’ve pulled my hair back tight, into a fake facelift-giver. There’s something very satisfying about suddenly having an angular look to the face and 90s supermodel cheekbones.

I am well into the Rare Beauty contour products. The stick one (I use the shade Happy Sol) is excellent and you just scribble it on like a crayon and then blend. But they have a new contour product, a liquid one, and I like this just as much if not more. It’s very soft, very easy to blend, very subtle. I use the shade Mellow - here - and do three dots under the cheekbone before blending out gently.

I then used a huge powder brush (love this one) to dust Hourglass Ambient Bronzer in Luminous Light all over the high points of my face and across my nose. This is a really soft, luminising bronzer that’s really barely there but gives the most ethereal kind of glow. Layered over the Dreambeam SPF and then the sheer coating of Glass Skin foundation it sort of sets everything in place whilst adding that final touch of expensive-looking glow.

I don’t think that any brand has managed to successfully mimic the effect of an Hourglass powder. Their face powders, blushes, highlighters and bronzers are some of the priciest makeup items on the market, but if you ever have points to spend or a voucher code and want a treat that will also be infinitely useful: this is what to go for. It requires a whole other post to talk through the options, which I will do, but the bronzing one is great for summer months.

Right. Skin done! Let’s get on with the rest of the show because I have far less stamina for this makeup routine than I did when I was commitment-free in Mykonos.

Eyes

I used a very, very old Chanel Eye Quad in shade collection 747, Mediterraneen. God I wish they’d bring this back and make it permanent. I have never been able to go wrong with a Chanel Quad, they seem to hold a certain foolproof magic for me, but this shade combo was just exquisite.

I used the lighter shades all over the lids and some of the darkest shade along the lower lashline and towards the outer corner of the eyelids. My long-term eyeshadow trick for lifted, sexy-looking eyes is always this: put a blob of something dark on that very outside corner of the lid and then blend outwards and upwards. Always upwards! If you followed the curve of the bottom lashline, it would eventually end up somewhere near the tip of your eyebrow: do NOT blend any shadow below this imaginary line! Does this need a dedicated video? I think so.

Let me show you what I did with the shadow and the Vieve Eye Wand in Coffee, my dark “blob” of choice. See how it changes the shape of my eye, looks sultry but takes mere seconds?

You can get the Eye Wand here. My chosen colours for regular use are Coffee and Mahogany and I’d say that these sticks are some of my most-used makeup products of - potentially - all time.

Buy Vieve Eye Wand

Quick lick of L’Oreal Telescopic Mascara to finish off.

This is my number one mascara of choice, as you will well know if you’ve been paying attention. Mascara launches come, mascara launches go, this is the mascara I buy at least every other month. It lengthens, it separates, it adds just enough volume to pass as vaguely “dramatic” and it’s less than a tenner. Try here.

Lips

Crikey, almost there. I find that it is now non-negotiable, the whole lip-lining thing. If I don’t lip-line and my lips are dry then my mouth looks like a lizard’s bumhole. The thing is is that the pigment in your lips starts to fade, as you get older, and so they eventually look thinner and thinner. A good, realistic lip liner filled in with a nice tinted balm will honestly, honestly make your lips look eighty times juicier. And I’m sorry if the phrase “juicy lips” makes you want to vomit onto your iphone, I can’t think of a better one. Plump lips? Plumptious?

Whatever: I can do such convincing things with a lipliner that people ask me if I’ve had filler put in! Which actually makes me want to not use a lipliner for a few days, because I rarely see any lip filler that truly looks how I’d want my own lips to look, but you get the gist of what I’m trying to get across. Lipliner: hugely effective.

I used KOSAS Hotliner here, in Mega. It’s smooth, gel-like to apply but lasts for ages. Longevity rating 10/10. I actually filled in with a lipstick, which means I was feeling really fancy - this one in called Pout, and it’s the most perfect pink shade I’ve manage to find in years. You can get it online here.

Any questions then fire away in the comments section - I am merely here to serve.

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I’m supposed to be devoting all of my blogging time to book promo but I have to be honest: the distractions keep coming at me and I suddenly have the constant urge to faff about with makeup and compile outfit posts.

Do me a favour, if you haven’t yet read my Sunday Times Bestseller, How Not to be a Supermodel: pre-order the paperback. I promise you that it will be the perfect summer read. You will laugh, you will cry (because it ends and you won’t want it to end) and you will immediately message me demanding I write a sequel.

You can pre-order your copy here - you won’t get charged until it gets sent out at the start of July.