Permanently Beautiful

It’s hard to believe but the ’80s are back! Big hair, football-size shoulder pads, kohl-lined eyes and ruby red lips. In the 1980s women came into their own in the workplace. Clothing fashions, hair styles and makeup reflected women’s new-found power on the job and served to augment her presence in heretofore male-dominated board rooms. Fashions were forceful and imposing and makeup had to be bold and colorful to stand out. In the 1980s women wore more makeup and eye makeup and lip colors were darker and more noticeable than they had been before. It was a look that commanded attention.

Research has shown that every 30 years fashion styles repeat themselves but with a new twist on the original. Today’s makeup styles give the brassy, look at me ’80s a  softer, more sensual appearance that exudes self-confidence and says we’ve arrived and we’re here to stay! The dark kohl-lined Goth eyes of the 1980s have been softened into far more sensuous smoky eyes. Lips are still red; but instead of the bold, brassy reds of the ’80s, lip colors are softer, warmer, earthier reds. It’s the lip liner not the bright color that calls attention to the lips today; but instead of matching liner and lipstick colors, liners are going more brown this season. And put the lip gloss away during the day. Matte-finish lip stick says I’m in charge at the office.

Permanent makeup can give you the perfectly applied lip liner that is the base for today’s powerful, sensuous red lips.

With the last chocolate bar a fading memory, it’s time to put away the Halloween grease paint and start thinking about your holiday look. Thanksgiving marks the start of holiday festivities. Dress up cocktail parties, family gatherings, office bashes, potlucks with friends, dancing ’til dawn, shopping junkets with the girls – a girl’s got to look good! So what’s hot for the holidays? Sex, smoke and shimmer!

Soft, smoky eyes get the holiday touch with a little shimmery shadow on the lid. Carefully apply then smudge a thin line of deep brown or gray eyeliner to top and bottom lashes. Stay away from black; you don’t want sepulcher eyes (Halloween is over). Add mascara, a swipe of shimmery blush to your cheeks and finish with a light lipstick or gloss. Stay away from dark lips to keep the focus on your eyes. Permanent eyeliner adds depth to your eyes. Smudge a little eyeliner on top to smoke up your eyes.

Go sexy this holiday with deep red lips. Line lips first, then use a lipstick brush to fill with your favorite show-stopping red color. Shimmer a sparkling blush along your cheek bones. For this look, keep the focus on your sexy lips by pairing with a light matte eye shadow that’s close to your skin tone and a swipe of mascara. Permanent makeup creates a perfect lip line for the sexiest lips this holiday. Create permanent lips in your favorite lipstick color or apply new shades over the ideal background for your skin tone.

Longer, darker, fuller lashes croon the commercials for lash-extending mascaras. Their siren song seems to promise that if you swipe their product on your eyelashes, men will fall at your feet! What the commercials don’t tell you is that fibers, chemicals and dyes in mascaras can cause serious eye problems in some people, particularly those who suffer skin or chemical allergies. Bits of mascara or extension fibers can flake off eyelashes and fall into the eye, creating a serious abrasion hazard for contact wearers that can damage the cornea. And mascara wands result in numerous eye injuries every year. I mean, who hasn’t poked themselves in the eye on occasion trying to apply mascara? Consider yourself lucky if you didn’t do some permanent damage. Despite the fact that Johnny Depp has signed on for Pirates of the Caribbean IV, the eye-patch look is only in at Halloween!

There is a better, safer way to call attention to your eyes. Permanent eyelash enhancement, particularly when paired with permanent eye liner, calls attention to your eyes without putting them at risk. Permanent makeup can make lashes appear thicker, lusher and fuller without eye makeup. Permanent eye makeup means your eyes look fabulous day — and night. No running eyeliner when you’re sweating at the gym, no mascara dotted cheeks when you wake up in the morning, no more embarrassing dark smudges and no need to “freshen up” as you move from office to night life — just 100% beautiful eyes 24/7!

The sensual Smoky Eyes that super model Heidi Klum shows off to such spectacular effect are the ultimate in dramatic eye makeup. Softly smudged shadows surround and feather out from the eyes, creating dramatic depth and making it seem that your eyes truly are the window to your romantic soul. It’s a look meant for romantic, candlelit dinners in exotic restaurants or red carpet nights dancing at the hottest new club. But it’s not an easy look to achieve. Start with too thick a line of eyeliner or get a little heavy-handed with the eye shadow and you have raccoon eyes, disaster unless you’re going Goth to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror.

Here’s how to create Smoky Eyes without the raccoon effect. Start with a very fine line of black eyeliner. For perfectly outlined eyes every time, consider permanent makeup eyeliner. Thicken the line slightly at the middle of the eye to create depth. Don’t use black for the eye shadow. Runway makeup artist Linda Hay creates Heidi’s smoky eyes using soft gray or chocolate shadows. Dark greens also work, but avoid blue shadows. Choose two shades of the same color, a dark and a lighter, neutral tone. Sweep the darkest shade from your lash line to the eyelid crease. Apply the lighter tone from the crease to the brow bone. With a cotton swab, stroke gray or medium-dark brown shadow under your lower lash line. Finish with three coats of black volumizing mascara on the top lashes only.

As women age, looking good may not mean looking young. Trying too hard to look young can come off as silly or just plain sad. It could be just an outfit that is too juvenile like a halter top atop a pair of Daisy Dukes on a 50 year-old. Or it could be something far worse - too much cosmetic surgery.

Think of fish lips Meg Ryan who is almost unrecognizable now at age 47 compared to sexy-at-63 Helen Mirren who clearly has not had a facelift.

And under no circumstances, should any woman consider cosmetic surgery DIY territory. We recently read a sad tale of a 54 year-old woman who suffered complications from trying to perform cosmetic surgery on herself.

The 54-year-old woman declined to give her name, but told reporters that she ordered a $10 vial of liquid silicone online and injected it into her lips and cheeks a month ago.

She underwent corrective surgery to undo the red swollen results of her DIY project. But because doctors aren’t sure exactly what she injected, they said it could take multiple procedures to fix.

Her photo is so scary that it makes Meg Ryan seem like, well, Helen Mirren.

But even Helen Mirren probably gets permanent eyeliner for a little extra oomph. Permanent makeup is much more affordable than a facelift, much less risky and helps you look your best at any age – without looking fake or silly.

Hot, steamy, summer nights can make straight fine hair go limp and curly hair frizz.  What to do when it’s time to step out for a special summer evening?  Just think, what would Audrey do?

Of course, we’re referring to the one and only Audrey Hepburn. And of course, she’d wear an updo as she did in her classic film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”  Here’s how to get the look.

Get the look:
•    Step one: Blow hair out straight. Add body by setting it in big rollers for 10 minutes.
•    Step two: Pull hair back and twist it up into a loose twist. Clip into place. Pin up any short pieces in the back.
•    Step three: Pull out a section in the front so that it frames your face, which is what makes this style fluid. Spritz in a volume-building finishing mist for hold.

Wear it with..
•    Clip in a bow barrette to take this style from day to night.
•    Add at least one piece of glitzy jewelry
•    Complete the Audrey glam look with permanent eyeliner and permanent eyebrow makeup.  You don’t need a Hollywood makeup artist when you’ve got permanent makeup. And maybe a pair of long over-the-elbow black gloves?

Finding a humidity-proof hairdo for a summer wedding can be a challenge. Get inspired by the gorgeous red-carpet styles of stars like Becki Newton and Eva Longoria Parker and find a ‘do that will keep you looking picture perfect from the walk down the aisle through the reception send-off.

A lot of time and detail went into choosing your dress, ring, flowers, and even your hairstyle. Don’t let your makeup take a backseat. Take the time to go through magazines and pull out makeup styles that you really like, even tear out the ones you really hate.  It could be how a certain feature is played up, or that great lipstick color, or how the skin glows, or even how they used way too much eyeliner. All this is easy to say and show with pictures. It helps tremendously to show you what you like with pictures rather than endlessly describing it. This gives anyone helping you, whether it’s a make-up artist or your best friend or a salesperson at department store counter, the best way to see what you like and don’t like. Remember, two people’s ideas of pink lipstick could be completely different. There is a lot of truth in the adage that says “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It really gives a lot more information with a visual sense.

With all the variables, getting permanent makeup will relieve you of some of the nerve-wracking guesswork. Permanent eyeliner, lip liner and eyebrows can go a long way toward making the big day really picture perfect.

Here’s a list of people I never want to see in a wedding flick again: Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, Cameron Diaz – and Anne Hathaway’s getting close.

But we’re halfway through June, so we can safely assume Hollywood has no more wedding movies up its digital sleeve. However, out here in the real world there are still plenty of June weddings to go.

If one of them is yours, congratulations. Now do yourself a favor and get some permanent makeup. You’ll be stressed out enough. Do you really need to worry about eye makeup and lipstick? With permanent makeup, that’s all taken care of.

Here are several more reasons why it’s a great idea to face your wedding day with a face made gorgeous with permanent makeup:

No makeup to drip black rivulets onto your white gown if you get teary-eyed at the altar.

Wedding photos

Wedding night. I repeat, wedding night.

Honeymoon – especially if the honeymoon involves snorkeling or otherwise plunging into large quantities of water, salty or chlorinated.

On that special wedding day, every bride wants to look her very best and be at her most beautiful, but presenting your best face can be a little daunting.  How do you make sure your wedding makeup stays on all day, looking flawless in your wedding photos, and manage to make you feel like a model, but still look like you?

Easy. Permanent makeup. Trust me, later when you’re putting together your wedding and honeymoon scrapbook and pleased with how terrific you look in all the photos, you’ll be very glad you did.<-->

In the 1950s and 1960s, tattoos signified rebellion against middle-class conformity, according to historian Jonathan Zimmerman. They were associated them with street gangs, motorcycle clubs, ex-cons and drunks. In 1959, the National Education Association advised schools that “potential juvenile delinquents” could be identified as “those with male kin who are tattooed.”

And it was mostly males who got inked, not females. In a culture of straight-laced Organization Men, tattoos came to embody a kind of rough-hewn, frontier-style masculinity. That’s why Philip Morris USA Inc. decided to adorn its Marlboro Man - the epitome of 1950s machismo - with a small piece of body art on his hand. “We wished to show a man who, during some moment - some loose moment - got himself tattooed,” an advertising executive explained.

Fast-forward to earlier this year, when toymaker Mattel Inc. released its Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie doll. It comes with a set of tattoo stickers that can be placed anywhere on her body, plus a tattoo gun that allows children to ink the doll - or themselves.

That tells you all you need to know about the changed cultural meaning of the American tattoo. It has become just as common among women as among men. Most of all, it has gone 100 percent mainstream. If even Barbie is getting inked, and it’s totally stylin’, we can be sure that there’s nothing remotely rebellious about it.

That could be the best news of all, if you’re still debating about yourself and tattoos. If you get inked, you won’t be defying social propriety. As tattoos become more accepted, indeed, it will be unusual to find someone who doesn’t have one.

That’s why the heavily tattooed ex-rocker and reality-show star Ozzy Osbourne warned his own daughter against body ink. “To be unique, don’t get a tattoo,” Osbourne urged. “Because everybody else has got tattoos.” Of course, his daughter got one anyway.

A subtle and gorgeous way to get inked is with permanent make-up. You can flaunt it or keep it hushed as your beauty secret.

We read that at the recent Roberto Cavalli fashion show a dark smoky cat eye with a 60s style mane of hair was the new hot runway look in beauty.

 Both hairstylist Guido Palau and makeup artist Pat McGrath cited Brigitte Bardot as their inspiration for this super-sexy look. Jennifer Lopez  comes to mind as another icon of this look. To achieve the dramatic eye, McGrath applied dark liner around the entire eye, as well as in the crease and inside the lower lash line, blending slightly for definition. The liner was then topped with eye shadow in a black hue and lashes were coated with major mascara.

It’s power-house glam with a lot of drama. Perfect for a special night when you want to amp up your volume. Why not get a head-start by having a base coat of permanent eye-liner all ready applied to both your upper and lower eye-lids?  You’ll save precious time when you’re in prep mode for getting ready.  Plus there’ll be less margin for error when you’ve all ready got a permanent eye-liner guideline to follow.  Just trace it over and build it up.

 Then when you want to dial it back down, you’re all ready there!  And if you’re having a special sleepover, you can go ahead and take it off – your evening eye make-up that is – assured that when morning comes, you’ll look fresh and gorgeous. No caked smudges or black flakes of make-up around your eyes. And you won’t look like your face is missing in action either.