Cosmetics To Reflect Natural Tones

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29783, 28 March 1962, Page 2

Cosmetics To Reflect Natural Tones

Few women are able to classify correctly their skin shade, cosmetic market research shows. Faced with a host of colours from which to choose, and armed with little real knowledge, most women will reach for the pinkest tints they can find.

Even where a real expert advises a more neutral tinge in make-up to enhance or play down natural skin pigmentation, she frequently clings to her own private belief that a blatant pink or peach is right for her. A number of women identify themselves with a skin type they either want to be or think they ought to be. A medium skin tint, which combines balanced amounts of all the main colour pigmen tattoos of the skin, is still more common. Age affects pigmentation too. As the years pass and skin becomes coarser, more yellow tends to show up. The really delicate porcelain - tinted skins are the ones that tend to vein most easily ai.d get blue-red patches on the cheeks in middle age. So what may have been right in the twenties or early thirties can be wrong in the forties

recognising that a combination of lack of knowledge and wishful thinking produces some garish results, has provided a new concept in make up. After nearly a year’; research into skin tones, both in England and on the Continent, it has scrapped all its old shades and produced a new range which it calls “mutation colours.”

This new range, comprising eight shades only, is subtly blended and muted down to emphasise natural undertones Ail the colours, whether they vary from peach to beige, rose or bronze, are played down to a more neutral and discreet background. The foundation is as iigh* as a good souffle, the extra fine loose powder has a small plastic clip-on inner lid which ensures that wnen the main lid is removed, even when the box has been tilted or jolted, the contents do not spill The matching cream powder compact was designed by a Danish silversmith.

Cosmetic firms conscientiously try to help women by issuing booklets and charts which give directions for dividing skin into colour types and naming particular shades for them. But this does not seem to solve the problem of correct selfanalysis for the majority. One cosmetic house

Test samples of the new muted shades have been distributed to stores and chemists throughout the Dominion. The cosmetic chemist who was in charge of blend : ng the muted toning? says: “Women should tes* them by smoothing a little on the inside wrist as the skin tone there corresponds more with the natural complexion than any other part of the body. The tone that disap pears Is yours."