Beauty’s new fad? The ‘cold girl’ look, no snow required!
Better...not younger
Last week, I enjoyed an extremely jolly lunch with a 19year- old friend. Obviously, we also had a good laugh about the cluelessness of men when it comes to slap.
Boys today apparently boast about how they prefer girls to be cosmetics-free, while pointing out pictures of girls with the ( heavily make- up- reliant) ‘clean-girl aesthetic’.
Men of my generation made the same claim, applauding women with a ‘no make-up make-up’ look — created by using more than 30 products.
Only now, tiktok is having a field day exposing these coves.
tiktok’s current trending beauty obsession is the ‘cold-girl look’, for which Hetty and I both share a penchant.
Not a girl with a cold, you understand — no one wants that — but a woman whom the cold weather has seemingly supplied with luminous skin, flushed cheeks, rosily swollen lips and gleaming, frostily highlighted eyes. this is a ‘natural’, if artfully augmented, look.
Make- up artist to the stars and beauty brand founder Lisa eldridge recently recorded one of her tutorials on the subject and gets it spot on — unsurprising given this was her signature look in the 1990s.
Back then, Lisa would use theatrical paints stippled on with a sponge for her raw, windwhipped take. thirty years on, there’s a tranche of modern products to make the guise prettier, rosier and more glam.
I like to kick off with one of the dewier spFs with discernible skincare benefits, namely saltee’s City serum spF+ (£38, saltee.co.uk), an spF 50 that really brings something to the party by way of fresh-faced radiance.
Next, I’ll use my go- to foundation for a base: Bobbi Brown skin Long-Wear Weightless Foundation spF15 (£37.50, bobbibrown. co.uk).
It is the brand’s top- selling foundation, offering 16- hour, luminous matte coverage in 43 shades. Whatever else I experiment with, I find I always come back to it.
the key to cold-girl gleam is blush: a chilly, blue-pink flush suggestive of boosted circulation. Lisa brushes on her true Velvet Lip Colour in Velvet Beauty (£26, lisaeldridge.com) by way of a cream blush. she then adds Bobbi Brown pot Rouge for Lips & Cheeks in Chocolate Cherry (£26, bobbibrown.co.uk) for a heightened, blood-in-the-cheeks rouge, setting with powder blush: Dior Backstage Rosy Glow Blush in pink (£31, dior.com).
My skin prefers powder then cream: Clinique Blushing Blush powder Blush in the nippycheeked lavender hue Iced Lotus (£ 27, clinique.co.uk), followed by Jones Road Lip & Cheek stick in Royal plum (£34, jonesroadbeauty. com) for ultra-rich rosiness, applied with the brilliant Jones Road Blush Brush (£34).
either way, the trick is to blend away any remotely hard edges once you’ve dabbed over the apples of the cheeks, then across the bridge and tip of the nose.
You’ll also want to powder skin with your usual translucent fixer for that just-in-from-thecold matteness.
eye-wise, Lisa uses her own Liquid Lurex eyeshadow in Cressida (£19, lisaeldridge.com) — a lovely, lustrous pearl — for the requisite frosty glisten. Or, if you invested in last week’s Charlotte tilbury Hollywood Glow Glide Face architect Highlighter in Moonlit Glow (£38, charlottetilbury.com), then use that.
after this, simply smudge any dark-brown liner into the lashline for natural-looking emphasis and open up eyes with your usual mascara.
as ever, vanishing midlife lips will benefit from subtle liner. Next, add a pinky sheer gloss. Dior addict Lip Glow Oil in Berry (£ 30, dior. com) would suit beautifully.
Or try e.l.f Hydrating Core Lip shine in ecstatic (£6, boots.com), a ripe, orgasmically flushed pink. It boasts an unappealing aftertaste but is extremely fetching, and for six quid one cannot have everything.
then it’s on with the earmuffs and off to face what looks set to be a far chillier week, looking effortlessly beautiful.