NEW YORK -- Sometimes the natural look needs a little help.
If you see a fresh-faced model on the runway or an apple-cheeked star on a red carpet, it's a safe bet that she's wearing makeup, whether she looks like it or not.
"You want makeup that makes you look like yourself, just brighter and more alive," said Bobbi Brown, who has made her name in the beauty industry on a palette of neutral colors.
There are two different routes to take: nude-colored cosmetics that highlight your natural color, or barely there makeup that uses light and diffusion to more simply give a more flawless look to skin. Either way, it's all about camouflage, said Jean Ford, the founder of Benefit Cosmetics.
"When all is said and done, and you're looking at yourself in the mirror, you're looking at the center of the face and that's where the darkness can be -- under the eyes, around the nose, the bridge of the nose," Ford said. "This is where colorless color comes into focus."
The trick, Ford said, is using the brightening agents that you find in translucent, blendable products with a light pink, flesh or white tint. "It's a youthful transformation that's not unnatural," she said.
Still, finding the perfect shade of neutral can be harder than picking a bold, red lipstick, Brown said. There's more wiggle room with a hue that's highly pigmented. Trial and error is the best (and really only) way to get the colorless colors right.
Once you find your complementary tones, though, those products will become the easiest to put on, she said. "It's three-minute makeup max."
As a "corrective tool," Sarah Lucero, the head of artistry for Stila Cosmetics, said that a dab of a light shimmer shadow on the lower part of the eyelid and a sweep one shade darker in the crease will make the eye appear bigger and brighter. She also likes to use a flesh-tone or white eyeliner just inside the rim of the eye to help make a face look truly awake.
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