"I love that you encourage everyone to wear bright pink. I love pink lipstick, and generally described as olive skinned I should be free to wear it all. But thanks to my Irish mother, I have a very yellow undertone. It sorta scares me away from most of the bubble gum shades I love. Any tips? Can you suggest some good pinks for me?"
Asked by Anonymous
Hi, I am VERY yellow-toned seeing as I’m Asian, and I’ve found that going slightly deeper (as opposed to bubble-gum shades) when you are wearing blue-pinks tends to be extremely flattering. Think of shades like MAC Pink Nouveau, or even deeper fuchsias like MAC Quick Sizzle, etc. rather than Saint Germain.
But if you like the paler colors, just make sure to wear a blush with matching blue-pink tones.
We can get away with a lot of colors as long as there’s a bit of an “complementary tone” on the cheeks to balance out the color a bit. This stops the skin from looking sallow or worse, jaundiced, in contrast to the very blue, very bubble-gum shade on the lips.
Other than this, one other problem you can get with pale pink lipstick is your lips sort of “disappear” because your lip line disappears. (This is for everyone, including those without yellow undertones.) Use a deeper blue-based pink liner to line your lips first, and make sure the line is soft and not too hard. Then apply your lipstick RIGHT to the very edge until you can’t really see the liner without zooming in really close. This gives you a discernible lip-line, but doesn’t look like OBVIOUS darker lip liner.
The final tip is not to go too light. The lightest you should go is a pink that is no deeper than the skin surrounding your mouth.
