Transitioning make-up from winter can be a challenge. I’m entirely weary of the cold season’s heavy textures and deep tones. It’s a new year, and I’m inclined toward light formulations and general freshness – some colour.
This transition must be carefully conducted, however. The days may be starting their slow journey toward lengthening, but a glance around will confirm that we are still very much in winter. As a result, a glowing summer complexion with too many bright or pastel hues might look at best overly optimistic and, at worst, slightly deranged. It doesn’t help that such tones need a bright natural light to look their best. In the narrower, slightly greyer hue of winter, they can look chalky and leeched.
What we need at this time of year is “warming up”, but not in the 2004 department store beauty counter way (ie foundation three shades too deep). No, we want warmth in the vigour-injecting, light-reflecting, spring-starts-on-my-face way.
When unsure of how to proceed (aesthetically speaking), I always turn to Chanel and its pragmatic ethos. The brand's clothes evolved from cuts traditionally used in menswear, so the focus is generally on comfort and wearability first. Their beauty is no different. The new Chanel Spring collection, launching on counters January 8th, is called Les Fleurs de Chanel, and has quenched my thirst for face-reviving transitional make-up. Like any collection by Chanel global creative make-up and colour designer Lucia Pica, it is clever, surprising and unusual. The focus is all on warm, floral and tonal earthy hues with just enough pink to resurrect a face that hasn't seen the sun in a while.
Chanel make-up artist Thom Walker recommends my favourite product from the collection – "After the holiday season, we sometimes need a little pick-me-up. I love using Fleurs De Printemps [€55 at counters nationwide from January 8th] highlight on high points of cheeks, its soft coral colour is the perfect traditional shade to add flush to your cheeks in the winter months, and you can pump up the colour moving into spring." A sort of blush/highlight hybrid, this instantly structures and brightens the face.
Two Les 4 Ombres eyeshadow quads (€53 each) – Golden Meadow (a sort of golden hour light in an eye palette) and Bouquet Ombre (a more peachy toned offering with copper and umber undertones) – offer the most expressive mask-friendly option. For a particularly dramatic but still wearable effect, they can be worn with Le Volume de Chanel mascara in Metal Terracotta (€34), which is a shade unlike any I’ve seen before. Walker describes it as “a coppery rose tone mascara that adds such an elegant touch of warmth to the lashes. For everyday make-up, incorporate it with the beautiful soft burnt brown tones of the eyeshadow palettes.” It makes blue and green eyes sing.
Two striking but practical Rouge Allure Velvet Extreme floral-inspired lipsticks round out the collection (Pivoine Noir is a sumptuous deep peony pink) while the Le Vernis nail polishes (€25 each) – as always with Pica’s collections – offer a little shriek of subversion. Try Metallic Bloom, the metallic red (daring, post-Christmas), as a counterpoint to the soft warmth of the rest of the collection.
