Miracle Balm
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What The Foundation
Diary / Beauty / Sep 26, 2022
Bobbi’s Beauty Hacks: Match Your Face & Body
Written by: Bobbi
Photography by: Ben Ritter & Jon Paterson
Making sure that the color of your foundation matches your body is key. I learned this while working on set with photographer Walter Chin. He said to me, “Bobbi, tomorrow can you please make the body match the face?” So the next day, I took the little glass Prescriptives makeup bottle and started to apply it to the whole body — all 6-feet of it.
I thought to myself, this doesn’t make any sense. I’m sure there is a foundation that really matches skin. There wasn’t, so I started to mix my own using yellow and red tints. This mixing and matching helped me create my first foundation range for Bobbi Brown Cosmetics.
Today, it’s a lot easier to find a foundation color that truly matches your skin. Make sure your foundation is yellow-based. Everyone has yellow undertones in their skin. Pink-based foundations end up looking mask-like on most people. Test several shades on the side of your face, between the nose and side of your cheek. Make a stripe from the cheek to the jawline and gently blend into the skin. The correct shade will disappear into your skin.
If your skin tone gets darker in the summer or on a vacation, you may need to adjust your foundation tone. Keep a deeper shade on hand to accommodate any changes in tone. You can even blend it with your regular shade if you are between the two.
Even with the right foundation color, some women have more color on their face and chest and less on their neck, and bronzer is the best way to make sure it blends with the rest of the body. It’s a great way to add a healthy glow all over the face and to even out any color differences through the neck and body, and can also be used to even out red areas, sunspots or rosacea.
Light brown bronzers with a hint of pink or coral is best for pale skin. Medium skin tones look good in medium brown-pink or brown-coral and women with darker skin should look for a bronzer that is dark brown with blue or red undertones. If the bronzer looks too red, orange or ashy, you're using the wrong shade.
