One of my first high-end blush purchases was based on a youtube review, where the reviewer encouraged all brown girls to try a particular brush because it was brown girl friendly. So I purchased it with a couple gift certificates I had. Only the blush didn't work on me as well as I hoped.
Why not?
I mean it was supposed to be brown girl "friendly". I'm brown. So it should have worked for me. Or should it have?
Later on, I realized brown skin comes in all different shades and undertones. So what works for one brown girl..does not work for every brown girl. I have a very neutral to warm undertone depending on the season, the girl in the video had a deeper complexion that was more cool. Which could have explained why it worked better on her. On me, it just looked ruddy. It took me a couple years to understand it better, and I still don't completely.
But your skin-tone and undertone determine what looks good on you.
There is very cool, blue toned brown skin. As well as very warm, yellow-undertoned skin, as well as people that have a very reddish tone to their skin. I've even seen people with a purple undertone to the skin. All in different shades and all beautiful.
So where is this post coming from? A certain gold highlighter that has been touted to work on all skin-tones. Yes, all. I don't believe there is one product that works on every single tone. How can it when we are all different?
The trend with highlight is to have a glittery (sometimes very yellow) stripe on the face, at least according to many popular instagram/youtube gurus. People should notice you have highlight on according to this new trend. But that trend is not for me. It's not something you would expect to see on the red carpet or a renowned makeup artist doing.
Like these pictures. I assume its highlight but really I can't tell that their skin isn't just naturally glowing. They just look like they have the best skin, which I'm sure they do-but it's red carpet so they must be wearing highlight?
Taylor Swift always has great makeup. Who is her artist???
Lupita always has beautiful glowy skin. I love her skin tone!
Runway glow! I'm not sure who she is, but her glow looks lit from within!
I should state that when I look for highlighter I like something that gives me a glow that can completely stump people. My MAC Mineralize Skinfinish in Gold Deposit does that. It gives me a glow, that doesn't look artificial. If someone asks me about it, I usually say it's from green smoothies (ha!). I don't wear it often, mostly for special occasions. It's my "secret weapon." It works for me because I am very warm-toned and I have quite a bit of orange. It just melts into my skin without looking glittery (glitter= hello pores on me). Certain golds (more yellow or true golds) look terrible on me. Doesn't matter if it's highlighter or eyeshadow or whatever. It would look like a yellow/white based stripe on my face. Now of course, that works for some people especially if you look good in gold already or you just wear it well or have a golden skintone. But I've seen people insisting that a certain popular gold highlighter looks good on ALL brown-skinned girls and it certainly does not.
In fact I've even voiced that (I have no filter). I say "That highlighter doesn't work for me and some other people I've seen it on" and people hear "I hate that highlighter on you, it looks ridiculous!" I believe in everything ain't for everybody (in the words of Jill Scott in the song Cross my Mind), but to each his own. But I'm going off on something different now.
Bronze/orange/coppers look nice with my skin tone. So I need a highlighter with one or both of those elements. I think it has something to do with your undertone. A really fair skinned, pink undertone would want a very light, pinkish undertone highlighter and so on and so forth. I have found a couple charts on google, but I don't want to take someone else's hard work.
All I really wanted to say was just because a product is brown skin friendly, doesn't mean it will look good on all brown skin-and that's OK.
RANDOM: If someone is encouraging you to buy a palette just because it's a great value and it's something you know doesn't fit your taste or would look good on you...think twice. A palette is really only worth the money if it's something you will love and use.
No comments:
Post a Comment