There’s a quite unseemly amount of colour in the shops this season: clashing oranges and pinks, livid purples, zingy greens, acid yellows. It all makes for a “bold and vivid palette”, or so I am told. More like a monumental headache, if you ask me. I’ve nothing against colour blocking per se; it’s just that you have to be very careful how you style it.
Very vibrant colours can make you look terribly washed out. Too much make-up won’t do either: you’ll just end up looking like a clown. You have to strike a balance. Keep it clean, simple but well-defined: soft cheeks, simple eyes, statement lips (either a bold bright or something sheer and almost imperceptible). Nothing fancy, and certainly nothing grungy or grimy.
One advantage of colour blocking is that it does give you the perfect opportunity to try one of this season’s bolder, more unnatural lip shades. Stay away from red (too wintry); instead try pink or, if you’re feeling very brave, orange, which was a key trend at the spring/summer 2011 shows. Even on the most flawless of skins, it demands to be worn alone: the rest of the face should ideally be nude, with perhaps just a smidge of mascara on the roots of your lashes, and neat, well-defined brows.
Illamasqua has a fabulous apricot shade called Perilous (£15.50; illamasqua.com), which is quite soft and buttery and relatively easy to carry off, and a warm hue of bright pink, called Corrupt. For a really toxic orange, MAC’s Morange (£13.50; maccosmetics.co.uk) is a proper traffic-stopper; the pink equivalent is Impassioned, a daring, amped-up fuchsia.
One of the difficulties with very vivid, pigment-rich shades is that they tend to fade in the middle of the lip, leaving you with a rather unflattering outline of half-hearted colour. Lipcote (£3.45; lipcote.com) may be as old as the hills, but it really works, keeping pigment in place for hours. A newer solution with prodigious staying power is Maybelline’s Superstay Lip Color. No orange in this range, but an excellent bright pink, Sparkling Fuchsia (£8.19; boots.com). It comes in a double-ended package, with the colour at one end and a moisturising gloss at the other. You need the gloss, too, since otherwise the lips get a bit dry.
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Personally, I don’t go a bundle on really bright lips; I prefer to keep things simple with a sheer gloss or coloured balm. Lanolips’ Lip Ointment with Colour SPF15 is gently flattering (£8.16; lanolips.com); and in April Lancôme launches L’Absolu Nu, a range of radiant, sheer colours, which have a wonderful, soft texture (£19.50; lancome.co.uk). With this look, you can strengthen the eyes with a little liquid liner applied very close to the upper lashes. Topshop Liquid Eyeliner in Rook (£6.50; topshop.com) has an easy-to-use felt applicator; or bypass the need for any make-up at all by having a few fake lashes bonded to your own. A full set is too drag queen for everyday, but a modest half-set will work wonders. Daxita at Atherton Cox (athertoncox.com) is your gal: incredibly fast (like 20 minutes) and unbelievably deft.