There is some truth to the idea that many men only recognise a handful of colours. If we ignore colourblindness[2], then it’s mostly down to psychology[1]. However, it’s not necessarily as subtle as that academic article: in general, men simply don’t care that much. Even if we appreciate the beautiful colour co-ordination that ladies exhibit, we don’t actually understand it or really think about it.
In boy-mode, I have to worry about which of my charcoal coloured suits to choose, which black shoes, which tie (I can’t even tell you what colour ties I own, I don’t care – except that black is only for funerals, unless it’s a bow-tie in which case that’s formal). If it’s dressing for a more informal setting, there are a similarly enormous range of options; which grey t-shirt or top to wear with which pair of blue jeans.
In girl-mode, it’s colours all the way. I mean everything involves colour choices, and the matching or non-matching of similar colours can be critical. Hair colour, dress colour, accessory colours, handbag colour… and of course makeup colours.
But before even getting to the makeup colour, there is the mysterious base layer for makeup – the foundation[3].
Just because the colours matter more in girl-mode, it doesn’t instantly make me an expert however. And getting the foundation colour correct, to match one’s skin tone, is not trivial.
Carry On Screaming
A small admission which those who know about these things will understand. Early on in my ventures into makeup, I was donated various items including some Boots No 7 foundation.
This seemed to work ok, so I trotted off to buy some more, and ended up with something which was horrendously mismatched to my skin tone and made me look like something undead and straight out of a horror film.
Naïvely, I thought that “No 7” was the colour: it isn’t, it’s the entire range. I did briefly wonder why they had so many bottles of the stuff out on the shelves; I just assumed they sold a lot of it. It never even occured to me to wonder why there was no “No 6” or “No 8” or indeed any other number. So the random “No 7” I bought was completely different.
Given the sheer range of foundation colours, and my inability to judge which might be the best match, I bit the bullet and arranged an appointment for colour matching. I was a little concerned about their high-tech camera-and-computer-based matching system, because, well, remember the Flintstones?
Even with a good close shave (a whole world of complexity in itself), the colour of the skin where beard hair grows is different and changes over relatively short periods of time – in mere hours.
So whilst the Hanna-Barbera cartoonists might have slightly overdone it, it does illustrate my point nicely.
Before applying foundation, I (and others like myself) have to use a colour correcting layer over these areas first. It looks quite scary – the colour is difficult to describe but basically orange/pink. My favourite makeup artist tries not to let men being made-up for the first time see this stage in the mirror, because it tends to frighten them!
The colour does not show once the foundation is applied (as long as you remember a loose powder layer between the two to stop them mixing – did I mention that it was all quite complicated?), but it does stop the “Five O‘Clock Shadow” look from ruining otherwise beautifully applied makeup.
This, clearly, makes colour matching of a foundation rather more of a challenging proposition. Thus it was with some trepidation, on top of the uncertain reception from the staff and other customers in the store at the time, that I headed off to Boots for a colour matching session.
Who needs experts? We all do!
The sign of a true expert, for me, is someone who isn’t knocked off-balance when put outside their usual zone of experience; when unusual or unexpected things arise they use their expertise. This is what differentiates an actual expert from someone who has just been trained to operate a system and blindly follow its output.
My colour matching expert didn’t bat an eyelid when I rocked up. She looked at the photographs of what a professional makeup artist had managed to do previously, immediately understood the challenge, and said straight away that we wouldn’t be using their clever technology – she’d do it by experiment and by eye.
Interestingly, no one else in the vicinity seemed to find it at all strange or disturbing, which was a pleasant surprise.
Job done in a few minutes; correct colour match identified, and some finer aspects of the use of foundation particularly around the eyes discussed, with some useful information acquired from someone with much wider experience than myself.
So a big thank you to the staff in Boots, and now armed with the correct foundation, I can spend my time worrying instead about choice of colours to mix, blend and apply. And the clothing colours too….
Sporting Ukrainian colours in the middle column with yellow & blue eyeshadow, nails and jacket/tights.
Footnotes
[2] Men are much more susceptible to colourblindness because the relevant genes are on the “missing” part of the Y chromosome. Thus a single erronious set on the X automatically leads to colourblindness in an XY configuration, whereas in an XX configuration you’d need both sets to contain the error to bring out the recessive characteristic.
[3] Not to be confused with the epic tales by Isaac Asimov in his multiple book Foundation series.
Sophie Baskerville 