When you first started wearing makeup, what was your look like?
I was all about eyeshadow–tons of it and then nothing anywhere else on my face! All about the shimmers + colors.
— Christine
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I basically used concealer around my nose, in the middle of my forehead, and on my chin, thick brown liner on my top lid and mascara. Maybe some blush. Maybe.
OMG same! I’ve been a smokey eye girl all my life. 20 years ago, I was still a tween learning to do my own makeup for the stage, and there was no such thing as YouTube, so I had just ONE photo of my favorite Bollywood actress taped to my mirror as a guide to do my eyeshadow. I was so fixated on learning how to do the eyes that offstage I only wore eyeshadow and powder. I cringe so hard when I think back to those days, but I’m glad I had to learn by trial and error.
Also, totally unrelated: I now no longer buy any new makeup without consulting your blog first, so THANK YOU for all that you do!
As a young teenager in the early 1970s, my biggest influences were David Bowie and Mary Quant. I wore a rainbow of colors on my eyes and glitter everywhere. (Much to my mom’s dismay!)
I just remembered my earliest makeup effort: I have naturally full lips, but when I was a pre-teen I used to try to make them look thinner like the models who were popular around 1969-1970, such as Cheryl Tiegs. I achieved this two ways: Not filling them in completely with lipgloss and trying to keep them slightly curled under, which probably looked pretty weird!
I only wore eyeliner! Nothing else!
Monochrome face a lot of the time – cream and brown eyeshadow with brown lipstick, until I discovered MAC. I didn’t see the value in blush until about 10 years ago. Sometimes I wore foundation.
Gosh, it was the 60’s, and I was totally into the London Dollybird look – lots of mascara, black liner, white eyeshadow and the original nude lip.
I’m still into that look!
Very simple and 80’s: eyeliner, mascara, and frosty lipstick.
I am embarrassed to remember this (and would rather forget)–foundation that’s too pink/light! I look back at some of the pictures and cringe! And too strong/unnatural brows. Luckily that phase didn’t last long as I mastered makeup application fairly quickly. I wish there were all these tutorials back then. 😀
Started off with just mascara and eyeliner, eventually added foundation but that was it! Didn’t start using blush/bronzer/highlighter/eyeshadow/brows until multiple years after I started using makeup – clearly a teen of the 2000s lol.
Brown mascara and deep burgundy lips. Extra points if the lipstick bled and smeared!
On Sundays when my parents would take me to church I would also include CoverGirl foundation that was two shades deeper than me but it was a perfect match for my mom, so there’s that!
I’m glad not very many pictures of me in my teens exist. My look was really something else.
Lots of black eyeliner drawn right on the lashline, upper and lower. Occasional light pink or purple eyeshadow on the lids. Mascara (without curling lashes omg). Powder foundation too light for my skin tone. No blush, bronzer, highlighter. No brows ? shimmery pink lip gloss!
It was so bad that just thinking about it has me roflmao! As in; I had NO idea what I was doing.
Eyeshadow, but only one shade (aqua, green, purple or blue), only on my minuscule mobile lid. Didn’t understand that because my adoptive Mom had large, rounded eyes with plenty of lid real estate, I couldn’t simply copy hers. Then I’d do my earliest iteration of liquid liner wings, having to wait for them to dry, because very hooded lids! If I remembered mascara before my dad yelled at me that the school bus was pulling up, then some mascara. Lip gloss, and out the door. I was in 9th grade, and looked a goof! Oh, and because we didn’t have eyeshadow primer and I had very oily very hooded almond shaped eyes…just try to imagine how all that looked by 3:30 p.m. when I arrived home!
90s supermodel, grunge, and Kevyn Aucoin were my inflences. I wore it all. Foundation, powder, mascara, blush, eyeshadow. Eyeliner was brown or gunmetal gray. Wore brown everything. Brown eyeshadow. Brown eyeliner. Sable (aka brown) blush. Brown lips…usually Revlon Coffee Bean. Also had a brown colorstay liquid lip in coffee that I wore for that very cool brown matte lip look. Wore black mascara. Faced was mattified. Love it. It was so 90s ala Cindy Crawford and Drew Barrymore. And imagine that I was able to figure things out without YouTube. Just had a subscription to a YM, then Allure and read books by Kevyn Aucoin, Bobbi Brown, posted pictures of ads on my walls and I played with makeup. Things never as truly terrible as we sometimes imagine and it’s all just a learning curve. I have such fond memories of wearing and exploring makeup as a teen. Wouldn’t change any of it:)
Although it was many, many years after I began wearing makeup, I will always have a place deep in my heart for 90s makeup and fashion. I had Coffee Bean, too, but I also liked Revlon’s Toast of New York and Blackberry lipsticks. I also had a Revlon lipstick called Fleshtone that I’d wear to work. I think that was discontinued. And I remember loving any shade that had the word “raisin” in it.
I’m not sure how our ages compare (I’m 30.) but pre-youtube was a fun time in makeup! I also loved my Kevyn Aucoin books and brown everything. And honestly, I am really impressed by how polished the kiddos can be for insta, but I have a lot of love for the less self-aware, less refined makeup that we wore back then. Even today as an adult who has gotten pretty good at makeup, I feel like there’s something alluring about things being slightly unfinished or unprofessional.
Also the odd occasion I would buy Allure was such a treat. I remember buying their annual “sexy” issue as an inexperienced teen and cutting out my favorite makeup looks to try to recreate. It was definitely misguided but I can’t say it wasn’t fun.
Shout out to Clinique Mocha Pink blush, too, while we’re talking about sable lol
I wore very simple makeup (the end of 90s): mascara, eyeliner and lipstick.
At first I was just applying concealer (and those green color correctors in a stick), because I had acne. It took me some time to get to lipstick, mascara, eventually eyeshadow (but only on special occasions). I wore foundation for the first time at ~19. And I think I only started with cheek and brow product 5-6 years ago, which means I was about 25. 😆 Now I cannot imagine myself without doing my eyebrows, even if I just only brush a little with a brow mascara.
All of the eyeliner, mostly black on the waterline and lower lid, but also teal, copper, or gold wings.
The first makeup product I remember buying was an eyeshadow rollerball by Maybelline in the silver and blue shades. I think this was in 7th grade. I would wear just that on my eyes with nothing else.
My mom didn’t let me wear eyeshadow or eyeliner until high school, but she let me wear mascara, blush, concealer, and any lipstick I wanted in middle school. She felt eye makeup made girls look too grown up, which I thought was completely unfair at the time, but doesn’t seem so oppressive looking back.
So she took me to the Clinique counter and got me a natural looking mascara, Mocha Pink blush, and (bear in mind this was about 2001) Bamboo Pink lipstick which was kind of a YLBB pink EXCEPT that it was brimming with silvery white frost. I also liked to buy red and plum lipsticks from The Body Shop or Wet N Wild. So my look was, “12-years-old with mascara and statement lip.”
The other middle school girls used to wear powder foundation and very heavy blue or black eye makeup, but I wasn’t allowed to make those particular mistakes until high school. I do have to hand it to my mom, I probably wore less raccoon-like eyeliner because not being allowed to wear any when my classmates were really piling it on as tweens gave me a more discerning eye for it. …Then of course I went goth and all bets were off.
I wore a cakey layer of Covergirl’s clean foundation on really dry skin initially, it’s a struggle to find foundation that’s emollient but that doesn’t make me look greasy now, even. Estée Lauder’s Resilience Lift Extreme Ultra Firming Creme Compact look beautifully skin-like for a while but my skin changed and it no longer looked as good and the product got discontinued. It’s the same story for every base product I’ve tried barring one or two, maybe. The application/finish is great initially but then my skin’s oil production and cell turnover changes and there’s nothing I can do to make it look good. I’ve tried AHA and BHA exfoliants*(not at the same time , mind you) with the proper ph and concentrations and over a good length of time and I still have issues.
I was a teen in the 80’s, so of course I wore frosty blue eyeshadow on my mobile lid and frosty pink eyeshadow from the crease to brow bone, with blue mascara and blue eyeliner on my waterline. I also wore too much plum colored blush and either a frosty pink lipstick or just clear lip gloss. At least I am cool toned, so all those pastel blues and pinks worked for my skin tone. I much prefer the 90’s look of matte finish foundation/powder, minimal eye makeup and dark lipstick, I will still do a look like that today, but I would never step out of my house looking like I did as a teenager!
It was the 60’s so you can probably imagine. White, White eyeshadow with a baby blue eye shadow. Mascara was a dry mascara and applied with a spoolie. Eyeliner was a pencil liner and lipstick was a Bonne Belle gloss. No eye brows done. Don’t remember using any blush. I did use the liner to pencil in some lower lashes like Twiggy who along with Cheryl Tiegs were the big cover models at the time. For my 8th grade home economics class a model came in and taught us how to put false eye lashes on so I did that for quite a while. For some reason, wigs were really big in southern California so we all wore wigs to school for like 8th and 9th grade. Towards the end of high school Cover Girl brought out their tubing mascara and I was hooked.
Wow, that was a long time ago. But, I mostly wore lipstick–always pink–and eyeliner and some blush. At the time I began wearing makeup, CornSilk powder was readily available in all stores including grocery stores. I used that a lot to keep the shine at bay. I still miss my CornSilk as it was such an awesome product.
Liner top and bottom, twiggy lashes and false eyelashes and white lipstick. Takes me way back!
I started wearing makeup when MAC studiofix powder foundation was in so that was my HG for yearsss and my face always looked way light in pics! lol that and thick eyeliner on regular days, smokey eye on all other days that weren’t regular days lol!
It was high school in the early 70’s and I was wearing Bonnie Bell gel blush (from a tube), tinted lipgloss & colored mascaras (blue, green, purple). Maybe didn’t start w/ liner ’til college….amazing how you forget the really important stuff :). But cannot forget one striped tube of Yardley shared between 5 girls in the bathroom during recess – all of us walking out with identical pale frosty Zombie mouths, and feeling soooo daring.
When I first started wearing makeup it was only a few years ago. I was about 25. I didn’t wear makeup until my illness caught up with me and I started looking ill. I was desperate to cover up the “sick look” so that I would look healthy and well. Believe it or not, people don’t always treat you nicely when you look ill, so that’s why I started wearing makeup. In this society, we are expected to look perfectly made up at all times. The two most importing things to me when I first started were my base makeup (foundation and concealer, especially under my eyes) and blush. Lipstick was also important because it added color and life to my face. The rest of my makeup wasn’t as important to me as foundation plus concealer, blush, and lipstick or pigmented lipgloss. (I did wear mascara pretty early on, and then I bought Stila In the Light when it was on sale because they were discontinuing it. That was my first palette, and I loved it so much. After that, i started using lavender eyeshadow to compliment my brown eyes, but I still prefer the Stila palette.). I used to use Dr. Hauschka makeup that I bought at Whole Foods until my face swelled in an allergic reaction to the fragrance in the makeup. It was lovely makeup, though, especially the blush. They have since changed everything, so I don’t know how good it is now. Bobbi Brown has since replaced Dr. Hauschka because quite a few of their products are free of masking fragrance (which makes me nearly pass out in addition to other symptoms). I adore my Bobbi Brown makeup, but I am devastated by the fact that they are not cruelty free. I haven’t been able to find another brand that doesn’t give me an allergic reaction. I can wear Bare Minerals original foundation (the only product I can wear by the company) in the warm months, but not in the winter because my skin is bone dry. I fervently hope this long comment helps someone else with allergies like mine. Xoxo
Tinted moisturizer, some plum colored blush from the ‘new’ brand Clinique, pale pink lipgloss, and lots of black kohl kajal!
Makeup wasn’t that fun in the late 70’s/early 80’s- cakey, heavy, undertones of foundation were orange or mauve-y pink, clumpy mascara that smeared & flaked, brow gel was non existent, you daubed your eyeshadow on with a sponge applicator – I reaaly liked the idea of makeup but it wasn’t until the 90’s that I loved wearing it.
I loved eyeshadow and mascara. I would load up 3 to 4 coats every day using brillant blues in the late 70’s. I was born with hooded eyes and I did what I thought would make my eyes stand out more and not look so small. If my eyelashes didn’t nearly touch my eyebrows I wasn’t satisfied with the look. I also did a faux cut crease/graphic eye liner style using white frosty eyeshadow on the lid, with a lighter touch of the same shadow on the browbone. I would use a really thin brush the size of a typical pencil brush and use that to draw a bright blue line of eyeshadow across my crease leaving the lid up to the line frosty white, to give what I thought was an illusion of a larger lid space. Then I would follow the then deepen the outer V with the same eyeshadow.
I would then use a Burgundy Blush from Helena Rubenstein which I loved which I used in the draping style on my face.
I wore a CoverGirl powder foundation that they don’t make anymore-it came in a blue compact. It looked pretty good, except on the odd time when I’d put on too much of it. I also didn’t do as many multi-shadow eye looks. Other than that, pretty much the same as I wear it now-same tendency to wear bold colors and to do a bold eye and a bold lip at the same time, same love of colored mascara. I’ve been very secure in my makeup style ever since I first started wearing makeup during dance recitals as a kid.
I never wore shadow. It always looked so garish, or the colours were all wrong (on me). I’ve always wore mascara and maybe some blush (can’t quite remember) as it was the 80s.
In the 90s I wore bold red lips and really put sharp points on my cupids bow with liner, and black winged liner and mascara. I’ve not worn a bold red lip since the 90s, and have tended to avoid winged liner for a decade or so. I never wore foundation until the last 2-3 years.
Black eyeliner and mascara. This was in the mid-eighties. That’s when I discovered the embarrassing way that I should never line my lower waterline or lashline since I have very big and round eyes and it just seems off. I was gifted with perfect skin and didn’t need any face makeup (perks of dry skin in youth, now I’m paying the price with fine lines at middle age).
“80s Tween…so baby blue eyeshadow, blue eyeliner, mascara, and pink lipstick.
I was a teen in the 80s but always loved the 40s/50s look so when I turned 15 and was allowed to wear make up I went heavy with the liquid liner, mascara and red lips.
Before you cringe, this was 1994.
L’Oreal Mattique foundation (very heavy coverage on my 13 yo face!), purple eyeliner on full eye rim, Maybelline Great Last (thanks Seventeen magazine!), same purple eyeliner to line lips (yeah) and Revlon frosty gold lipstick in the middle.
Also Cover Girl champagne eye shadow on lid, browbone and cheekbone (OG highlighter)
Totally natural. If you could tell I was wearing makeup then my look was a fail. Well, except mascara. I don’t know why it was OK to see mascara on my lashes when even my lips were always a mlbb tinted balm? This was in my 20s; small pores, even skin tone, no lines or wrinkles, so it actually looked pretty good.
I was about 11 or 12, so it was just light pink or peach cream blush, and either a clear Lip Potion rollerball lipgloss or a very light pink or peach Avon lipstick. In 8th grade, I added brown pencil liner, brown eyeshadow, and black mascara.
Tons and tons of really thick black eyeliner along the lower lashline …. and not much else.
Pretty much same as today I do love to play with colors, still love to try glitter on eyes love Colourpop super shock or WetnWild but keep it rather natural. I guess the only new thing much loved is highliter but not to the moon and back a subtle glow.
I am much more aware at my age what colors work on me better but still will try something which won’t exactly look great for fun but never a black, green or purple super dark lip.