Five makeup essentials
Dear Lucy,
I am hopeless at makeup. I do not even know where to start. I want to buy but I don’t want to end up with many useless things. What are your essentials? If you must only choose five, what would they be?
Vanna
Just five will be hard, but I will try. Will share with you my favorites:
1. Foundation/powder. Depending on the coverage you need, my favorites are Bare Minerals, MAC Studio Fix, MakeUp Forever Liquid Foundation.
2. Happy Skin Sculptacular. It’s a must-have and a keeper! I use it to not only contour (there is a cheat set when you flip open the palette!) but as basic everyday eye makeup (I apply the white powder with my ring finger on the balls of my eyes all the way to the brow bones, the brown shade goes on the crease and lower eyelids). It is so easy to use and it multitasks, you must get yourself one.
3. Laura Mercier Caviar Stick Eye Color. It’s so easy to use, practically fool-proof. Just swipe it in, blend with brush or fingers, and it will look like you spent lots of time carefully blending when, in fact, it just took a fast minute or so!
4. MAC lipliner in Chicory. If I could only have one lipliner in the world, this would be it. As for lipcolor, you can choose whatever you want and if you want a unified look, you can use it to double as blush, too.
5. Shu Uemura curlash. It is the best. Never disappoints.
All that shared, let me just say that perfect skin is the best foundation so use #1 sparingly, and only to cover up areas that need a little bit of help. It may take time to find the perfect skincare regimen (it is different for all!), but it will be well worth the effort. As for makeup tools, you really only need a few brushes. Buy slowly, but surely.
Lucy
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Clear, glowing skin after one session
Dear Rissa,
I’m regretting all those years I carelessly sunbathed without proper sunblock. Now, I have sunspots that I want to get rid of. Will IPL work even if I’m morena? BEA
IPL or Intense Pulsed Light is well-known for hair removal and erasing discolorations like freckles, sun damage, brown spots, even light acne marks, rosacea, and broken capillaries. A series of three to five treatments is said to give dramatic improvements.
I always hesitated to try IPL despite all the amazing benefits I hear because IPL is difficult on darker skin types. As a general rule, the darker the skin color, the riskier it would be. Because unlike laser, IPL emits a broad spectrum of light, meaning multiple wavelengths. Shorter wavelengths tend to target melanin in the skin, which is obviously more abundant in a darker skin type.
But Dr. Raissa Passion of SKIN Dermatology and Laser Center (located at The Spa, Bonifacio High Street, Fort, telephone 403-8000) changed this mindset for me. I was concerned about my sunspots and didn’t know what option to take. She told me we could still try IPL but at a much lower setting than usual. I was very hesitant because I felt I might not see results or that it would be ineffective. But because she was seasoned with using IPL on so many patients, she understood the correct setting for my morena skin. After the treatment, I was so surprised — my skin tone evened out immediately! More than that, my skin felt incredibly smooth and supple. It was such a big bonus that even the small spider veins somehow disappeared, too! I saw an instant glow and radiance after the IPL treatment! I’m sure the results are even more dramatic for fairer skin tones. I’m not really very aggressive in trying out laser or machine treatments, but this was very convincing. I was excited to book my next IPL because results were so immediate, even for a morena like me. It was such an eye-opener that IPL can work for morenas, too. The key is finding the right dermatologist.
Rissa
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Send e-mail to Lucy Torres-Gomez at ltg@pldtdsl.com. E-mail Rissa Trillo at stylesos_rissa@yahoo.com or follow her on Twitter @RissaMananquil.
