Made Up for Imperfection

Pssssst. Here’s a secret those fresh-faced, flawless cover girls and movie stars don’t want you to know. They are not perfect. But I know why they appear to be.

Before I spill the beans, imagine for a moment a blank canvas. You can mix up some color, splash it on with fingers or brushes, let it dry, and then show it to the world. But chances are, no one will be very impressed. But imagine the artist who primes the canvas first, who meticulously builds a flawless foundation where his or her masterpiece will sit, then creates the intended image with small brush strokes and sweeps of earth tones that reflect the light, filling in every spot that distracts from the overall picture, which is one of sheer beauty, and which last week, was me, Moira.

OK, maybe sheer beauty is an exaggeration. When I heard makeup artist Laura Mercier – the French woman who’s responsible for all those Vogue covers, who can be credited with the design of Madonna’s face for Evita, who makes up Oprah and Angelina and Sarah Jessica Parker – would be giving makeup consultations with her team of makeup artists at Bloomingdale’s, I made an appointment. I did it because Mercier’s Classique line of “mistake-proof” cosmetics is meant “to empower each woman with the tools she needs to realize the cover girl within.”

I fantasized about the cover on which I might appear, but all I could come up with was the National Enquirer, because I swear that when I was pondering the universe through a telescope a few weeks ago, I saw some of those former Heaven’s Gate cult members in the stars. Cover girl perfection is not something to which I've aspired because I’m uncomfortable in makeup. For one, I have freckles and foundation makes me look muddy, and secondly, I have a nervous habit of pulling on my lips, so lipstick lasts all of five minutes and ends up on my fingers and anything I touch. Besides, I’ve never been able to put on makeup and not look made up.

When I met Mercier and a San Francisco-biologist-turned-makeup-artist traveling with her, I thought I’d question the pros. I popped into a chair at the Laura Mercier counter and waited while they studied my flaws. Mercier, a former artist who’s now responsible for more cover looks than any other makeup artist around, explained that makeup “should be a tool, not a noticeable accessory… a fine screen for the face that puts features in softer focus.”

So does it work? The biologist, one of those artists who can draw a straight line without using a ruler, went to work on my face, cheeks, eyes, and lips, using his hand as a palette to blend the formulas. He insisted I could do at home in 20 minutes what he did at Bloomingdale’s in 40 minutes, which was like Picasso drawing a figure and saying, “You can do that, and faster than I did.” When he was finished, Mercier put on the finishing touches and we walked over to the mirror where I saw not me, Moira, but her, my more sophisticated, put together, made up self.

I splurged, bought all the stuff he used. But the next morning when I arrived at the office, people thought I’d been in a bad fight. My eyes were red from wiping all the liner off my pupil. My lips looked like lips do after an adolescent make-out session, due to all the lip liner I put on wrong and had to wipe off. The black eye look was from the misplaced shadow. The Secret Camouflage, well that’s good stuff that even I couldn’t mess up.

That’s what they mean by “practice makes perfect.” Or in the case of cover girls, practice (with the help of a good makeup artist), sells product.