With soft taupes and creams and a splash of plum, Clinique’s Autumn trend for 2010 is a collection of shades and colours that are sure to suit everyone, and make you feel and look beautiful.
What makes this collection so lovely aren’t just the colours. That would be too simple; after all, anyone could produce these colours. It’s the actual products themselves combined with the colours that make this set simply essential purchasing.
It’s no secret that many of the MAF artists are Clinique fans, and in fact, I’ve been a Clinique Fan for pushing 20 years. There’s something simple and elegant, yet totally on trend, all at the same time!
The quick eyes cream shadows are creamy and blendable. These sorts of products are often overlooked or dismissed as a poor way to apply the shadow, but as a tip from a makeup artist, who can’t double dip and therefore can’t use the applicator, it’s worth taking a small blob onto your fingertip and gently smoothing that onto your eyelid for a simple one-colour look, or take a tiny bit onto a brush, then blend that as you would with any other cream shadow, or in fact, as you would a dry shadow! They are buildable though, and certainly you can layer, and in fact, I’ve been using these in conjunction with a black dry shadow and the intensity of colour has been fantastic, but without the look of black. All it did was deepen the colour, meaning that I could really contour in and create shapes and shadows, but without having to use more than just a steady hand of black!
But there are other products that are part of this collection – The quickliners are simply that. Quick Liners! You can have a thin line that fills in the blanks between eyelashes (a Hollywood Trick for a natural look is to dot eyeliner between the lashes to make them appear thicker and longer), or you can build up the line to make it a real feature of your face and look.
And most will have heard of this at some point in time, the new shade of the High Impact Mascara, in Brightening Black, it’s the most surreal black I’ve ever seen in a mascara – it’s that wonderful blue black that you sometimes see in hair colours, and the blue counteracts the red in the eyes somehow, and makes them look instantly more awake and alert!
Not new to the Clinique group, but essential as part of this Autumn look are the eyeshadow duos in Beach Plum (such a cult favourite!), Like Mink and Blackberry Frost, easily wearable, easily blendable. I had all these colours in my kit even before they came out with this collection! Very useful for a pro makeup artist, as well as the general makeup wearer!
Rounding off the collection are the new colours from the Vitamin C lip smoothie set – Guava Good, Pear-Fection, Running Latte, Strawberry Bliss, Pome-Greatness and Blackberry Nirvana. Soft and caring like a balm, but with a big juicy kissable hint of colour.
In all, an initially soft and gentle collection, with a little bit of layering, you can go from day to night, desk to dinner in a couple of flicks of a brush!
Sam Donald
