As ever it was a really enjoyable morning and the women who came along watched avidly as I performed the usual transformation on a volunteer 'model'. Afterwards they were full of questions about which LFF products would help them to look equally fabulous! It occurred to me that, even amongst a group of quite sophisticated women, there was still lots of confusion and ignorance about what makeup to wear and how best to apply it.

What Most Older Women Don't Know About Makeup:

1. Primers are NOT like moisturisers! I was amazed that only two of the women at the party knew about primers. Older skin is like blotting paper - its super absorbent and dry and you can't draw a straight line on it without the line blurring and going fuzzy. That's why your makeup disappears, your lipstick goes fuzzy around the edges and your eye makeup ends up looking messy. The solution? Wear face, eye and lip primers on top of your moisturiser and your makeup will look smoother, neater and last for hours.
2. Highlighters are useless as an under-eye concealer. A product like YSL Touche Eclat is used by younger women to brighten their faces on the morning after the night before and it can work wonders. But it's hopeless used that way on an older face! That's why I wanted a rich creamy concealer which has sufficient pigmentation to properly conceal the eye bags (and age spots and assorted blemishes!)
3. Highlighters are brilliant to add a touch of luminescence. Used correctly highlighters bring the whole face to life and make your eye makeup look loads better. So - apply it in an arc on top of the cheek and brow bones to make them look more prominent and catch the light. Our Instant Bright Highlight is a magic way to add shape and create a dewier and prettier finished effect. It also makes your eye makeup really 'pop'
4. Blush doesn't go on the apples of the cheeks. This is a commonly held belief which may work on a younger face. However with age the apples of the cheeks have dropped - so place blush higher onto your actual cheekbones. Start directly under the centre of your eye and then pat in a creamy blusher in the shape of a croissant (!) If you use a powder blusher it will sit in the creases on your face - so a cream to powder formulation will look a lot prettier and can then be blended with a brush.
5. Eyebrow Pencils make older brows look worse not better. Take a pencil and draw on your brows and you end up looking like a child's drawing of a face. I devised our ingenious Bring Back Brow Shape to allow women with very faded or non-existent brows to create something that looks like real individual hairs so that their eyebrows would look as natural as possible. I used it on about 4 or 5 different brows on Tuesday morning and they all looked so much better than the pencil that the women had been wearing.
6. Red cheeks can be improved with colour correcting cream and a proper foundation. If you have bright red cheeks because of rosacea then cool it right down with a green Colour Balance Neutraliser. Then apply a proper covering foundation. Our Continuous Cover Foundation is designed to cover a multitude of sins effortlessly.
7. Black Eyeliners are unforgiving on an older eye. Young eyes look fabulous with a perfect black line drawn around the eyes. Try to do that on a dry crepey eyelid and you will quickly realise that you look more witch than bewitching! But eyelashes look thicker with a line drawn above them - so what to do? Just take a fine wedge brush and a matte eye shadow (I am currently using our No Shimmer Eye Shade in Aubergine) and push the shadow into the base of the lashes. You can use a Q tip to slightly soften the effect. If you have applied an eye primer this will stay put for hours.

Do you have any questions you want to ask me about your makeup dilemmas? Leave your comments here and I will do my best to answer you!