Celebrate the Return of Red

At this time of year everybody gushes over nature’s colour palette; brilliant yellows and golds, every conceivable shade of brown, but above all—reds; bright reds, deep reds, regular old Canadian maple leaf reds. I love fall colours but I’m most excited about the return of red lipstick.

I never stopped wearing red but in my professional experience client after client asked for neutral lip colouring, often paired with shadowed eyes; pretty, but boring and unimaginative. The least exciting look was the all-too-popular clean-with-no-colour application. I understood the popularity of these ingénue looks; they’re fast and easy to apply, and they make the models look very young, but as an artist and a woman who loves women I wanted more.

Well, we’re finally going to get more. Makeup looks, particularly for evening, are becoming more dramatic. Deep red lips and shadowed eyes, it’s almost a resurgence of the look popular in the 1940s when the glamour at home helped offset the horrors at the front. Now all some of us have to do is stop wearing hideous black or near-black nail polish.

Tags: lipstick, Makeup