Marilyn Monroe's makeup was flawless. It had to be because of the cameras and lights that were fixed on her at red carpet events. For this reason it took 6 hours to get her prepared for every appearance she made. Each aspect of her makeup was carefully considered, regarding her skin, lips and eyes.
To begin with, Marilyn placed a layer of thick moisturiser, like Nivea Creme, all over her face to create an even base for her foundation to sit on. It's always a good idea to moisturise your face before adding makeup anyway, because it keeps your skin looking and feeling healthy. This step added a shine to her skin that made her look more youthful. If you have oily skin you might want to skip this step, or alternatively, apply a lighter moisturiser.
They next step was her foundation, you can use any brand/shade you're comfortable with- Marilyn liked to use Max Factor. After she'd applied her foundation the next step was to contour and illuminate /highlight her face. The purpose of contouring is to add definition to your cheekbones (do the pouty fish face to find where you need to apply), jaw line, temple/hairline and nose, just to pull everything together and make your face look tighter. For this you'll need a bronzer WITHOUT glitter, try to get a matte bronzer. There are many Youtube tutorials that can visually demonstrate how to do this, but for now I'll say that the trick is not to add too much and to blend afterwards or you'll end up with exaggerated orange/brown lines all over your face. Marilyn liked to contour her face, particularly down the sides of her nose, because even after her surgery to narrow it down she still felt it was too big.
Again, the key to highlighting is to use very little. Apply a small amount of the product on to your ring/little finger and dab gently. Highlighting accentuates your best features and gives you a healthy glow. At the minute Revlon do a nice selection of liquid skin illuminators in different shades for different skin tones. The places Marilyn liked to highlight were: the top of cheekbones, her Cupid's bow, the bottom of her chin, along the brow bone, down the bridge and on the tip of the nose and her forehead.
Marilyn wasn't one to apply too much powder, but a light dusting of setting powder can't hurt to make sure everything stays where you want it. Nearly every cosmetic brand has a translucent powder.
For her eyes, Miss Monroe used two clever techniques to make her eyelashes look fuller. After applying winged eyeliner with a brown pencil she did two things to make her eyelashes look thicker: She applied a line of white eye shadow just below her winged eyeliner to accentuate it, and then- this is important- she would mirror the winged eyeliner on her bottom lash line with a brown eye shadow or pencil to give the appearance that her lashes were so thick and heavy they created a shadow. If you look very closely at her eyes in photographs you can sometimes see this trick. Her second trick was to push her false lashes down as the glue was drying to give a sleepy, seductive look.
Now finally *drum roll* her lipstick. The famous red lips. Or so you thought. It's important to acknowledge that despite popular believe Miss Monroe did not wear red lipstick while she filming. Due to the lighting and the quality of the film they were using at the time, a red lip on set would appear bright orange on screen. Because of this Marilyn's makeup artist used a selection of pinks of different shades. The trick to making her lips look fuller was to use three different shades. The darkest pink was used around the edges of her lips; the lighter pink was applied to the middle of her lips- and then blended out so she didn't look like a clown. The last step was to apply the smallest amount of white powder to the centre of her lips. All of this gave a 3D effect giving Marilyn those famous pouty lips.
Lots of Love
Jessicat X
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