Spring Summer: The Makeup
Breathe new life into your makeup routine and get ready for summer with this season’s hottest launches.
Is there a better sartorial moment than packing away winter’s endless layers and making room for summer’s carefree delights? The changing of the season calls upon a new mood: one springing with anticipatory visions of sunset-dappled evenings.
Switching up go-to staples isn’t only for uplifting your wardrobe. The same holds true when it comes to beauty and what you reach for each day in your makeup bag. The velvety skin textures of winter make space for glossy, I’ve-just-been-on-holiday skin; darker lips suited for the candlelit corners of December suddenly seem incongruous after the clocks change.
So what new products should you opt for? We’ve whittled down the list of this season’s most anticipated makeup launches. The following might be brand new, but they all have the makings of future classics.
The Base: bareMinerals Complexion Rescue Hydrating Foundation Stick
Foundation sticks have a chequered history, with many finding that solid formulas by nature are just too drying for their skin. So it may surprise you that our foundation pick for the summer months is just that: solid. But the similarities with other sticks end here. With its next-generation, water-based formula, bareMinerals has managed to create a take-anywhere foundation stick with inbuilt SPF 25. The thing we love most? The colour is buildable but still imperceptible, so you can achieve fresh-faced, glowy skin with one swipe, or hide everything from circles to redness and blemishes by adding an extra layer.
The Concealer: YSL Touche Éclat High Cover Radiance Concealer
YSL’s now cult classic has been mimicked but never replaced. Since it first made its way into makeup bags around the world in 1992, YSL has finally come out with a significantly different version after many years of deliberation and innovation. Although it’s been the natural illuminator of choice for playing up bone structure and disguising tiredness, its minimal coverage has required users to combine it with a more heavy-duty concealer or foundation in order to properly cover blemishes or dark circles–until now. The 2019 version combines all the perks of the original with more pigment, enabling it to truly conceal and highlight. It comes in 16 shades and includes caffeine, vitamin E and calendula extract to soothe tired eyes. For the first time, we can foresee a new product taking the place of its much-loved original.
The Bronzer: NARS Mosaic Glow Blush
NARS has famously conquered bronzers (hello cult favourite, Laguna), blushes (Orgasm, anyone?) AND highlighters (thanks to their Multiple Sticks!). Once it debuted at Fashion Week, their new limited edition Mosaic Glow Blush made the beauty world go mad. Using the multitasking palette with a golden bronzer, coral pink blusher and peachy highlighter, you can swirl all elements together to make one complexion-boosting shade (which they’ve dubbed “Fireclay”) or use each section individually to build colour and contour the face. We hope its success means it will graduate from Limited Edition to permanent NARS classic!
The Brow: Amy Jean Brow Veil
The latest Australian brand to make the leap to global fame is Amy Jean Brows, the go-to brow expert for everyone from Naomi Campbell to Delta Goodrem. Her product range has been meticulously honed and includes the stand-out, highly praised Brow Veil. This ultra-fine powder pen has a velvet tip applicator to give brows a fine mist of colour, filling in sparse areas and defining shape without looking heavy or unnatural (no one wants to see obvious brow pencil in summer’s unforgiving natural light). Without a doubt the fastest way we’ve found to perfect our brows, this will make its way into your make-up bag and stay there.
The Lipstick: Chantecaille
Chantecaille’s collections never fail to deliver, both in terms of what they stand for (the brand selects a charity each year, this year being the Attenborough Foundation) and their sophisticated vision of the season’s best trends. This summer, their three lipsticks might look like they’re covered in sugary glitter, but in reality, they glide on without a hint of grit thanks to a clever (glitter-free) formula containing subtle pearl pigments. The effect is a wash of shimmery, glossy colour in three of this season’s hero shades.
A native Londoner, Amy discovered her love for health & beauty while working at Harper’s Bazaar in New York before returning home to work for Conde Nast, Shortlist Media and Net-a-Porter. Eight years later, the mission remains the same: to discover the products and treatments that really work.
