Chill Factor: How the Subzero Temperatures Turned One Editor Off of Bronzer and onto Blush

 

During my early teens in the 2000s, when I was first hearing Britney Spears’s risqué fourth album, I discovered that fruitful magic of makeup. After-school days in my sleepy suburban town were spent trekking to the drugstore in search of one thing and one thing only: Bronzer. Lots of it. My room, desk, and locker were filled with multitonal compacts in ruddy golds, tannish browns, and a shade of orange that could only be described as “rotting tangerine.” And I employed that burnished powder as a contouring stripe, dusted down my cheekbones to the corners of my mouth to emphasize a superficial concave sliver. You would think that this bronzer binge was a phase that I would one day leave behind in pursuit of higher forms of beauty. But that never happened—at least, not until a few days ago.

The decision to ditch the expired citrus hues struck me on one especially arctic winter day: I had slept through my alarm and rushed out of the house sans makeup, only to be hit by subzero temperatures. After suffering through a brutal walk in which the wind whipped my face for fifteen minutes, I finally caught a glimpse of myself when I reached the office. My cheeks were red, bright red, and I looked alive. That sickly resting face syndrome that has forever plagued me? Gone. In its place was a cheery, eternally youthful glow that I radiated until temperatures became more bearable.

Even if that pretty, natural blood-to-the-surface hue faded away, all was not lost, I realized. Makeup could just as easily replicate the flush. Just look to the Topshop Unique fall 2015 show where models strutted out with beautiful, rosy cheeks ablaze. Had they been frolicking in the snow like a Russian toddler before they took to the catwalk? Not quite. Rather, it was the handiwork of makeup artist Hannah Murray who was inspired by cherubic choir boys and Stella Tennant running around with Bruce Weber in Scotland. Here, see Murray’s five tips for creating a windswept flush to keep you looking healthy all season long.

1. When it comes to color, don’t worry about going too deep.
“[The blush] doesn’t need to be sickly sweet and doll-like. What we did was ruddier, heartier, and more weathered, which is obviously what happens to you when you’re in the cold.”

2. Lay off of the foundation and concealer.
“The key is not to use a thick layer of foundation. Cream blush doesn’t mix well with foundation—you want to put it on raw skin. Then, you can perfect the skin around it with a little foundation or concealer—and that obviously makes it less makeup-y as well.”

3. A dose of blush isn’t just for the apples of the cheeks.
“Apply your blush slightly below the apples of the cheeks. It is where you naturally get weathered when the cold hits your skin, and blush rushes to its surface—it’s a little lower than normal blush.”

4. If you contour with bronzer, use sparingly.
“If you get to contouring, apply the blush a little higher on the apple of the cheek so it moves into that contour, otherwise you are going to get [an obvious] stripe of [makeup]. I like to contour with a little highlighter on the cheek, because the light hits the highlight, naturally shading the face and making it look much fresher. The whole point of this look [at Topshop] was that it was raw, beautiful, and flawless with flushed skin, so contour suddenly gets quite makeup-y and you don’t get that freshness.”

5. A dab of lipstick does the trick.
“There is something about the texture about lipstick that works into the skin. It is so easy and you don’t have to spend a lot of money on this. You do the lips and then you put the excess [color from the lip] on the cheek with your fingers and it pairs very beautifully. It works well without it looking cosmetic.”

RMS lip2cheek in Beloved rmsbeauty.com

By Terry Baume de Rose Nutri-Coleur in Bloom Berry barneys.com

Topshop Cheek Jelly in Reign, $14; topshop.com