cle de peau beaute

Japanese makeup can usually be summed up thus: an undying loyalty to safe pinks and safer beiges, sometimes with shimmer, other times not. It’s a look that’s indisputably pretty, whatever the runway trends, season after season.

Which makes Cle de Peau Beaute’s departure from the norm in Fall/Winter ’15 such a milestone for the brand. Instead of the wholesome shades it usually offers, the brand’s eye, lip and cheek colours are now bolder and more intense, with an overall effect that, though far from vampish, is more worldly sophisticate than fluttery-eyed schoolgirl.

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The new colour combos added this season to the brand’s range of Eye Color Quads ($110 each), for example, include deep, rich hues like teal green and navy blue. Makeup creative director Lucia Pieroni explains how she came up with the colours, which are inspired by Venice: “If you stand along the Grand Canal during sunset, the sky has a golden-peach colour (that she’s recreated in the burgundy-gold eyeshadow palette). The blues pay homage to dusk falling on the waters, while the green shades are reflected in some of the buildings’ eroding metals.”

Distilled into makeup, the colours could have been soft and pallid, or garish and disco, but Pieroni manages to tread the fine line in between. The result: The darkest shades aren’t too dark to be used on their own without giving a goth-like effect, and can be blended with lighter hues for more depth and complexity. It’s a way to make eyes pop that has “a softer, sexier and more mysterious effect”, says Pieroni, than simply drawing on thick eyeliner.

It’s also a more fashion way. This season, the runways are favouring dark, moody eye makeup that’s intense yet clean and modern – nothing too heavy or ’80s-reminiscent, and always balanced out by softer cheeks and lips.

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To go with the cool, more intense eyeshadow shades, Cle de Peau Beaute’s 10 new colours for its Enriched Lip Luminizers (which replace half of the existing shades available here, also $110 each) are darker hued – among them, a deep berry and a cherry red – and less pearlescent than the current shades. Yet they’re still sheer enough to give lips just a pop of colour when applied with a light hand.

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But it’s in the new Powder Blush Duo ($108) that the brand’s focus on turning its products into more fashionable offerings are most apparent. Each Powder Blush Duo has two different colours in different textures – a darker tone in a semi-matte finish and a lighter one with shimmer. Combining both, you get a cheek colour that gives the very light, natural flush that’s so in right now – no matter how heavy-handed the application. How this is possible: The formula has powders designed to settle in an even, delicate-looking layer over skin, with no blotchy patches, no matter how much product is used.
And here’s where fashion meets function: The power powders also mean that this barest of flushes stays on all day without fading.

 

Model photo Showbit.com Photos of Enriched Lip Luminizers Rebecca Cecilia Yip and Samantha Ngui 

An adapted version first appeared in Female’s August issue, out on newsstands now.

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