Beauty that feels like care

Find your placement

Suck in your cheeks lightly or tilt your chin down — the natural shadow under the cheekbone is your line. Start it level with the top of your ear and stop before it reaches the outer corner of your eye. Never bring bronzer past the middle of your cheek or it drags the face down.

Pick up less than you think

Tap an angled or small fluffy brush into a matte bronzer one to two shades deeper than your skin, then tap the excess off on the back of your hand. Warm-toned bronzer for warm undertones, a cooler taupe-brown for cool undertones — a too-orange shade reads as a stripe.

Sweep the soft "3"

Draw an imaginary 3 down the side of your face: across the top of the forehead at the temple, in along the cheek hollow, then back out and along the jawline. Use light, feathery strokes and build in two thin layers rather than one heavy pass.

Blend upward and back

With a clean fluffy brush, buff in small circles moving up toward the temple and back toward the hairline. Blend the jawline edge down onto the neck so nothing stops abruptly. If you see a hard line anywhere, keep buffing — never add more product to fix it.

Balance with warmth and light

Add blush to the apples of the cheeks just above the bronzer, then a touch of highlighter on the highest point of the cheekbone. The contrast of shadow, colour and light is what makes the sculpt look like bone structure instead of makeup.

Prep and smooth

Gently buff lips with a damp cloth or a soft sugar scrub, then press in a thin layer of balm and let it sink in for a minute before blotting the excess. Colour clings to dry patches, so this single step does more for the finish than any product that follows.

Draw the shape, not the whole lip

With a liner close to your natural lip colour, mark a small X at the cupid's bow and a dot at the centre of the lower lip, then connect the corners in short feathery strokes. Stay on your natural line, or a hair outside it — overlining more than that reads as a drawn-on lip.

Fill in for staying power

Lightly shade the whole lip with the same liner. This gives the lipstick something to grip, so when the colour eventually wears down through the day you are left with a soft even stain instead of a harsh outline ring.

Apply colour from the centre out

Press lipstick onto the centre of both lips first and blend outward toward the corners with a brush or your fingertip. This keeps the pigment strongest where the lip is fullest and avoids product pooling in the corners where it bleeds.

Blot, layer, and clean the edge

Press a tissue between your lips, then apply a second thin layer — two blotted layers last far longer than one thick one. Run a concealer brush around the outside to sharpen the border, and dab a touch of gloss on the centre of the lower lip for fullness.