For all the fanfare that monochromatic makeup has been garnering this red-carpet season (here’s looking at you, Beyoncé), I admit I’ve had reservations about trying a nude lip. As Vogue’s beauty writer, there’s no shortage of neutral lipsticks on my desk, all lined up in a spectrum of cool flesh tones. Each time a certain shade seduces, I bring it home—only to find a few swipes later that my pale complexion has dissolved into 50 shades of greige. Factor in pallor-inducing winter weather (and maybe the violet under-eye rings of a short night’s sleep), and you get the picture. My bathroom drawer of barely used lipsticks is an all-nude revue.
Which is why, on a particularly chilly Monday evening, I call up the makeup artist Romy Soleimani for a quick pre–Fashion Week tutorial. She arrives at the office fresh off a day of backstage tests, with one goal in mind: to lead me into neutral territory. Too often, she explains as she’s unpacking her kit, people get stuck on the “pale, pale, pale” version of the look—usually paired with the requisite smoky eye. “The pitfalls are definitely a color that’s too draining”—which looks all the chalkier this time of year—and also the wrong texture. “Make sure it’s not too dry and not too glossy.”
Neutral tones are notoriously unforgiving, so Soleimani’s first step is a gentle lip exfoliation with a dab of Bliss’s sugar scrub on a cotton swab. “Between the dry heat inside and the cold outside and getting off a plane, sometimes the girls are so dehydrated,” she says of keeping the exfoliator in regular rotation for her model clients backstage and on set. I can identify, even if Vogue’s skyscraping World Trade Tower offices are more along the lines of my cruising altitude these days. Next comes hydration (she likes Eve Lom’s Kiss Mix and the honey-laced balm by Nuxe), which sets the stage for our first hit of color: a tawny lip pencil with rosy overtones that she draws onto the entire mouth. “It’s Kevyn Aucoin in Medium—a great universal nude. I could safely recommend this to any woman,” she says. It’s pretty enough on its own, giving off a hint of terracotta, but she takes it down a notch, patting on a whisper of concealer, followed by a dab of By Terry balm in Toffee Cream for extra warmth. “Dusty nude,” she christens the shade. “This one is healthy and friendly and wearable.”
For nude lip number two, she reaches for something less expected: a contour cream with coffee undertones. “I definitely like using my fingers, so it doesn’t look overly lipstick-y,” she says, patting the product onto my mouth. The color—a subtle, striking taupe—is fodder for double takes, in an intriguing way. “That’s definitely stronger and more daring. It’s a confident nude lip,” she says. An oxymoron this is not.
According to Soleimani, the real key to pulling off a nude lip, however, lies in pairing a pale color with otherwise “dewy, gorgeous skin.” To finish off the look, she adds concealer under the eyes to even out discolorations where necessary, then returns to the Aucoin pencil, using her fingertips to blend the color onto the apples of my cheeks. (On darker skin tones, she might try a contour cream with red undertones, for a hint of flush.) “You really want the skin to look awake,” she explains from behind a cloud of Caudalie’s Beauty Elixir, which she mists over my face before dabbing Weleda Skin Food onto the cheekbones and inner corners of the eyes for hits of illumination.
“It’s kind of austere and beautiful,” she says, likening the uniformly tawny palette to wearing layers of monochromatic cashmere by The Row. “You never look overdone; you never look like you’re trying too hard.” Sounds like just the prescription for the mad dash of runway shows ahead. The final proof? I follow up this rare (for me) nude lip with another rare (for me) action in the form of a selfie—and I am here to report that it stands up to even the toughest of Instagram filters. Happy Fashion Week.
The post How One Very Pale Vogue Editor Mastered the Nude Lip, Took a Selfie, and Lived to Tell the Story appeared first on Vogue.