Bobbi Brown, but what shade?

So I'm going to continue my look into recommendations for skin tones. As far as my research goes Bobbi Brown's recommendations are the status quo. I haven't really found an opposing opinion, so I feel safe researching her color guides and find out what brands have a shade that goes with each, some, or none of the listed recommendations for skin tone type. I'm going to list them all below as a guide, and then work on breaking each of those down starting with Bronzer in Monday's post. We all know, by now, that Sunday's are for Tutorials. 

Bronzer Recommendations:

Alabaster (Gwyneth Paltrow)- Pink shimmer or peachy 
Light (Drew Barrymore)- Biegy brown with a bit of pink 
Medium (Sienna Miller)- Brownish pink with a bit of orange or warmth 
Medium-Dark (Jennifer Lopez)- Brownish orange 
Dark (Vanessa Williams)- Brownish Red 
Deep (Venus Williams)- Brownish blue 

Shades to Use by Natural Lip Color:

Pale Lips- beige, sandy pink, light coral, pale pink, & bright red 

Medium Lips- brown, rose, pink, orange, warm red

Dark Lips- brown, deep red, plum, deep chocolate, and deep raisin/berries

Two-Toned Lips- chocolate, blackberry, deep plum, deep raisin, deep red

Each natural lip color and shade has a colored box around it in the book to show what equals pale, medium, & etc and what equals each color; brown, rose, pink, & etc. I'm including an image of the guide and a palette of all the shades kept in her Pro kit. Both will give you an idea of what's meant by the colors and types listed. 

They only give us a very slight idea though and she doesn't really talk about undertone. 

Corrector Recommendations: 

Alabaster to medium (as exampled above)- pink 

Medium-dark to Dark- peach 

Deep- darker peach 

Any blush color seems to due as long as the formula is correct for your skin type; dry, combo, oily. Foundation on the other had has a very detailed selection process and is not defined even vaguely based on  skin tone, that seemed odd considering but maybe it was too complicated to even attempt charting it out. The only chart I found for this had to do with the color of your veins to determine wether or not your foundation should have a cool, neutral, warm, or a combination of those undertones. Foundation color and skin undertone is so important we'll be giving that it's own series. This series will focus on bronzer and lips, mainly, and slightly on corrector unless we find that it needs a deeper look but I haven't gotten that far in my research. I do know that corrector a come in yellow, purple, blue, and pink. Brown does not mention any but pink so corrector may need a deeper look because Brown only looks at under-eye corrector and gives no indication that she acknowledges the useful correcting palettes for face use. 

Bobbi Brown's Recommended Shades

I've had the Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual and she lists all of the recommendations for skin, lip, eye color and what type of colors you should use. For example, if you have Alabaster Skin you should use Bronzer that a pink skimmer or peach and if you have Medium tone skin you should buy Bronzer that is brownish pink with a little bit of orange or warmth. The only problem is you cannot, and I really mean, cannot find out what tone a bronzer has or undertone. Not even Bobbi Brown's own make-up line lists which color is which. You'd think since she wrote the manual she'd make sure to describe her products accordingly. In the book she lists 6 skin types and on her website she has 7 bronzers but one is new. So I am only assuming that she had one for each skin type. Too bad she didn't let us in on which one is which. I they get you buy more that way although her products are sold at stores at will exchange and you can test. If you're shopping online, though, it'd be nice to know. The one nice thing about shopping at www.BobbiBrown.com is that you can speak with a make-up artist from 10am to 10pm everyday except Sunday, until 7pm. So I asked which Bronzer went with my "medium" skin tone. She said the medium. That it had a "warm brownish/pink hue." I'd guessed that medium would probably be my match but on the website medium is described as "a medium brown." The site doesn't even say "a warm medium brown." I would have been more confident in deducted skills had she just added that one word. Also, I was just sort of pissed off because Bobbi Brown literally wrote a book on it, has her own make-up line, and could easily make sure to describe the color as she does in the book.

Bobbi Brown's Recommendations for Bronzer by Skin Type:
Alabaster (Gwyneth Paltrow)- Pink shimmer or peachy
Light (Drew Barrymore)- Biegy brown with a bit of pink
Medium (Sienna Miller)- Brownish pink with a bit of orange or warmth
Medium-Dark (Jennifer Lopez)- Brownish orange
Dark (Vanessa Williams)- Brownish Red
Deep (Venus Williams)- Brownish blue

Can you guess which skin type should use this color?

What about with just the name? Natural.

What about now with name and shade description?

Beige makes me think of "Light" although Tawny looks way too dark. The lightest color she sells does not look like a pink shimmer or peachy to me. It's called Golden Light for one and its described as "a light tan." I guess you could say a light tan was pink in hue but your still doing a bit of guess work there. Her newest edition, making 7, is called Elvis Duran and described as "a warm terracotta brown." Terracotta has is known as reddish brown so that would probably, according to her guide, go best with Dark or Vanessa Williams skin tone. The Elvis Duran doesn't look like it would show up as a tan on a Vanessa Williams type. It looks way too light. Come on Bobbi, give it to us straight! The same goes for corrector, concealer, lips, and eye shadow. She has a nice neat list in her book but her make-up line does not describe its products accordingly. So we're going to trust Bobbi Brown and her color recommendations but we're going to look into other make-up companies and find out what kind of information they give us. It may be none but we may find one. I took a look around last night after reading this and so far I haven't found one company that lists their bronzers undertone or tone, period. The best thing I found was a post from Jaclyn Hill's blog talking about what brand and type of Bronzer you want to use if YOU have a specific undertone. We'll do this for each one of BB's recommendations, starting with Bronzer.