If you never watched an episode of Chef’s Table on Netflix, you should. The first episode is about Massimo Bottura, chef of Osteria Francescana, #1 in the World’s Top 50 by San Pellegrino. There’s a great story in that episode: Mr. Bottura and his sous-chef tell the tale of the birth of one of the restaurant’s most famous desserts, named with the Italian equivalent of the sentence “Oops, I dropped the lemon tart.” Guess how the dessert came to be! They made a mistake, and accidentally ended up creating an award-winning dessert. Creativity is odd, and the true secret is the same in makeup as it is in cuisine: improvisation!
When we talk about beauty, situations like the one we just described happen all the time, especially at certain times, like that moment when you look at your beauty case, and realize you forgot to include something essential. It’s a tragic and funny moment at the same time, in which you curse at yourself for your bad memory, on the one hand – as you may do when you drop a lemon tart, for instance – and on the other hand you know it’s nothing serious, and that you will most definitely find a solution. These are the moments when it is good to color outside the lines, and not listen to your primary school teachers. Just forget the traditional use of whatever you have in your bag, and come up with new ways to use it. I like to think that that’s how makeup artists need to think when they are backstage, or whenever they get new products for their kit, complete with very thorough instructions from partner companies. Every artist has a genius and a rebel within them: they are perfectly able to apply a specific product on the one hand, and on the other they just want to chuck away the rulebook, go punk, and invent something new with the tools they have at their disposal.
Some of the latest makeup trends were born just like this , after all: from red lipstick used instead of concealer, to gloss being applied on your eyelids to create an innovative wet eyeshadow effect. If you love multitasking products, you will already know what I am talking about, but you still might not know some of these tricks.
A thick lip balm can be used for virtually anything: it can be an eyebrow fixer, it can repair cuticles, work as a base for lipsticks that are harder to apply, and not only. Mix it with anything in powder or anything pigmented, and you will immediately have your favorite shade in a cream. It’s really all about imagination! Take a brown eyeliner. On top of its traditional use, you can also smudge it on the entire eyelid with your fingertips, to create a basis for your eyeshadow; you can apply it on the hollow of your cheeks for high-precision contouring, or on your cheeks, to create the impression of a spattering of freckles. Translucent powder is probably the winner of multitasking products: if you applied your brush or your bronzer the wrong way, translucent powder will work like a magical eraser that makes everything better – it also works in the case of a smokey eye that turned into a panda eye. If you need volume on your lashes, just apply a thin layer of powder between mascara layers: it will work wonders! It can also make any glossy lipstick matte, and in case of extreme emergency, it can even be used a substitute for dry shampoo.
Can you stray outside of the lines more than this? No one is insensitive to testing products in the real world: you must all have a soft spot for some one unconventional use of one of your beauty products or another, we are sure of that! Anyway, we seem to have won this battle, because companies actually started listening to their consumers (and makeup artists!) Some cult products were released on the market in the last few years thanks to these backstage experiences, and some trends were born on YouTube in the same way, too. Eyelid gloss is a thing for many brands, as are multi-purpose sticks, which would have just been pencil lipsticks years ago. This winter, the metal trend has made metallic-finish lipsticks okay, too. We will see a lot of fun stuff in 2017, that’s for sure! If you have any other tips on the creative use of makeup products, please share in the comments!
