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. 

Chunky Dunk, Matte?

There are so many lip products out there, it is unbelievable. I did a little investigation into Tarte, E.L.F, and NYX lip products for our continued look into naming conventions.

I'll start by saying this all 2 of the 3 companies had the description of all their lip products online; gloss, stick, butter, tint, stain and etc. None of the companies had the color description on the actual product. Some names were, again, misleading and some of the descriptions didn't seem to describe the color I was seeing. The only company that did not provide a description for each of their colors was the most inexpensive. I do have to say this, though, the name used represented the color most times. Sometimes the name was cutesy and didn't indicate color at all. You'd have to guess. Can you guess which of the 3 I am referring to? Yes, it is E.L.F. Do we all agree that for the price we're willing to do some guess work or do we feel like if we're paying anything, even $3, we should get the most basic information- shade? I think at $3 a pop I still want an indication of color. I'm okay with Coral Cutie and Red Carpet. I'm not okay with shelling out the cash for flirty and fabulous and, the appropriately named gloss, Mysterious. All of their glosses give no indication of true base color. None of the companies game undertone but in lip products I think that's OK.

Let's start with our old standby NYX. They have 9 different types of gloss products but we're only going to look at the infamous Butter Gloss, the Soft Matte Lip Cream, and the Chunky Dunk Hydrating Lippie. We all know how popular those "chunky" lip crayons are right now. NYX's Butter gloss and Soft Matte Lip Cream are both award winning, according to the website and crayons are the biggest trend right now. That's why we'll be looking at those 3 products.

1) NYX does list shade descriptions for all 3 of these products online. You cannot view the descriptions on their mobile site or on the packaging. You have to go to the Full Site and you have to do it in the store as your browsing just like with their blush. 2) Their Butter Gloss is named after desserts, Soft Matte after foreign cities, and their Chunky Dunk after tropical alcoholic drinks. None of these naming conventions is used to describe shade, not the color of the drink or the dessert. What color is a city, anyway? I find some of the dessert names of the Butter Gloss to be misleading.  

NYX Misleading Dessert Names of Butter Gloss:

• STRAWBERRY PARFAIT (BLG01)- Fuchsia
• CHERRY CHEESE CAKE (BLG10)- Orange
• ANGEL FOOD CAKE (BLG15)- True mauve
• GINGER SNAP (BLG17)- Chocolate brown
• SUGAR COOKIE (BLG19)- Bright fuchsia 

Can you tell how many different shades of gloss this is? What shade they may be?

That only names a few. Luckily, we can see the gloss through the tube. Otherwise, I'd think BLG01 was a strawberry color not a fushia, BLG10 was a cherry color, and BLG19 was a nude. Those names conjure those colors in my mind. We all know that what you see in the tube isn't always what you get on your body. So a misleading name and no description on the package don't give me much confidence in what I see in the tube. My eyes may be deceiving me. I actually do have a tendency to be color blind when it comes to blues and grays. So that's not helpful. I did buy their Maple Blondie at Target today. It's a deep peach and a beautiful color, especially, when paired with E.L.F's pink umbrella lip crayon. I had done the research on NYX's Butter Gloss last night and had the list of name and descriptions with me while at Target. So it was easy to pick out the color I wanted. If I hadn't had that list I would have wanted to open each tube of Butter gloss up and swatch it. That really isn't fair to those of you that are going to buy the one's I would have swatched later on (I don't actually do that, I would have waited until I made a trip to Ulta, they have NYX testers, and bought a Butter gloss then but I see other women and children doing it.) If NYX isn't going to put the description on the bottle shouldn't they provide testers at each of the stores they sell their products in, not only Ulta. They would have lost my sale, at least, for today.

When it comes to NYX's Soft Matte Lip Cream I find it very interesting that they use the word "matte" in some of their descriptions. Aren't all of the Soft Matte Lip Creams, matte? They felt the need to use the word "matte" in the description of 9 of 22 total matte shades. How are we to know he difference? If we want something extra matte do we choose one of the below?

 NYX Soft Matte described as matte:

• ZURICH (SMLC14)- Matte muted rose
• ATHENS (SMLC15)- Matte peach beige
• CAIRO (SMLC16)- Matte pure nude
• IBIZA (SMLC17)- Matte deep rose pink
• PRAGUE (SMLC18)- Matte merlot
• CANNES (SMLC19)- Matte muted mauve
• COPENHAGEN (SMLC20)- Matte rich plum
• TRANSYLVANIA (SMLC21)- Matte deep violet
• MOROCCO (SMLC22)- Matte coral–orange  

 

Which of these isn't matte?

 I'll be waiting until tomorrows post to discuss Tarte and ELF because the lip product lines for all 3 companies were enormous. So, last but not least the oh-so-trendy Chunky Dunk Hydrating Lippie. The descriptions of the colors seem fairly accurate but, again, they are not present on the crayon and some of the names give me the impression of a different shade. 

NYX Chunky Dunk misleading names: 

• WATERMELON COOLER (CDHL01)- Rose pink
• POMEGRANATE MARGARITA (CDHL04)- Iridescent violet
• PEACH FUZZY (CDHL02)- Peachy nude
• HIBISCUS TEA PUNCH (CDHL06)- Mauve

I would expect CHHL01 to be watermelon shaded, CDHL04 to be pomegranate, and CDHL06 to be the orangey-pink of Hibiscus tea (like at Panera) not mauve. Now the Peach Fuzzy seems to be anything but misleading, right? Wrong. Peach Fuzzy is much more nude/mauve then it is peach. The description and name are misleading or maybe the shade of the product is misleading. Either way without a test of it I couldn't tell you. 

 

Does this look like a peach anything to you? It looks completely nude to me.

Lip Tip: Wet 'n' Wild Just Peachy w/ NYX Maple Blondie or ELF Pink Umbrellas w/ Maple Blondie are beautiful peachy pink combos. Very naked but peachy & pigmented at the same time.

I'll delve into Tarte and ELF tomorrow. It'll be worth the wait.