Agony Al: Makeup Tips for Dry, Winter Skin

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YOU ASKED: How do I look like a living human when my skin is that of a partially composed dead person? Makeup tips for dry, winter skin. 

I promised a part two to my dry, winter skin regimen and the universe really delivered for you, because my skin has never been more parched. For almost two weeks, I’ve been bed bound with a hacking cough, phlegm so gluey you could paper walls with it, and a body weighed down with aches all over. The worst part? I was isolating in my butch girlfriend’s flat: the land that skincare forgot. I didn’t think my biologically leathery skin could get more dry, but wiping my nose with her eco toilet paper (good for the environment, really scratchy), washing my face with bar soap and sleeping on a bed that doesn’t have satin pillowcases has really shown me that it can get much, much worse. 

Thankfully, I’m back at home and reunited with my precious humidifier, fancy bedding and creams. I’ve been marinating in moisturiser, but the damage has been done. 

I am writing this drowning in duvets, frantically trying to put things write with the skincare tips from last month’s article.

When I’m sick, putting makeup on my dessicated visage is the last thing I feel like doing but, unfortunately, we live in a society rife with misogyny, and I have a week of important work meetings. I have to shellac my face for men to take me seriously, and believe me a competent makeup artist. Yuck! Luckily, years of existing as a walking cadaver has given me foolproof tips for looking like a healthy, glowing, LIVING person when you have the skin of a rotting corpse. 

Makeup Application for Uber Dry Skin:

As I mentioned in part one, La Roche Posay’s Cicaplast baume is my go-to cream when my skin needs TLC. While it *is* the perfect moisturiser, it absolutely is NOT the best base for makeup. It’s thick, it’s wet and it’s bright white. 

Thick, wet and bright white. Potential Tinder bio for when my girlfriend dumps me for dragging their bar soap and eco loo roll? 

My top tip to getting ya face makeup ready after you’ve applied a thick cream is to drop a bit of oil on top. I don’t know the exact science of this, it just works perfectly to emulsify the moisturiser underneath and melt it into your skin. 

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Can you believe all it took was a bit of oil to melt in that white moisturiser? Madness! Here you can see the redness and flaky skin I wanna cover.

When my skin is acting up like this, I reach for a product that’s going to give enough coverage to block out my rundown acne and redness, while still having a skin-like glow … the mighty CC cream. In the west, CC cream and BB cream are names used interchangeably, and bring to mind light coverage, tinted moisturiser type products; that is NOT what I’m talking about. Popularised in East Asia, my beloved BB and CC Creams were initially developed for patients to wear following skin peels or surgery. Eastern style CC creams combine foundation with skincare ingredients and are thick, hydrating paste style products. I love them because their texture means I can almost fills in the craggs that lack of moisturise leave on me face, stippling the life back in. 

Unfortunately, formulas like this are most commonly made by Korean cosmetic companies, so the shade ranges are abhorrent. Though it was my favourite product to use on dry skin days, Skin79’s CC cream only comes in one shade so I can’t recommend it. Missha, another Korean brand, has a slightly broader selection with six shades, but they STILL don’t run very deep. If you’re looking to buy a CC cream that isn’t just a lacklustre tinted moisturiser, I recommend CC creams by ELF, who have a more inclusive colour range, as well as IT Cosmetics (though they only added product for deeper skin tones after being called out, cheeky gets!) and Thrive Causemetics. 

I’m using the palest shade in ELF’s CC cream. It’s very thick, but feels comfortable on the skin. 

Application technique when applying makeup on dry skin is so important because using  a buffing brush is going to aggravate and lift patches of dry skin, but using a damp blender can interfere with the oils you’ve added to your face - oil and water don't mix..  *science* - so when my skin is this dry, I go all old school and use my fingers to push product in. 

Fingers are nature’s beauty blender. There’s definitely a joke in here about a lesbian being good with their fingers 

Concealer tends to be drier than foundation or bb cream, so while I’d usually use two different products, when my skin is uber dry I rely on the v. hydrating cc cream to knock out my under eye darkness. 

The CC cream does a good job of concealing my undereyes, but I’ve used my PLouise eyeshadow base on my eyelids and to carve out me brows. 

Once I’m a monotone vision, it’s time for my favourite bit: BLUSHER. Winter means washed out, so while I take away the redness in the “wrong” areas, I put colour back in so I’m not a pale ghost. I know I’m going to be scrubbing at my nose and wearing a mask, so I apply blush in the conventional places, then go in with a healthy dab on the tip of my nose. It’s cute AND functional, because I’m probably going to look like Rudolph soon anyway from wiping my nose’s incessant dripping. 

Blush placement.Looks bananas now, but promise it’ll be pretty once it’s blended out. 

When working with ultra dry skin, I recommend using as few powder products as possible so nothing clings unflatteringly. I’m a liquid blusher stan, but here I’m using cream blush because it’s thicker and therefore is less likely to bleed into any creases and settle. If you don’t have a cream blusher, lipstick works fine! Again, avoid lifting any dry patches by using your fingers or a dry-lightly damp sponge to apply.

Told you the blush would look normal when blended! Also, isn’t it weird that late stage capitalism tells us to hate the natural redness in our noses and cheeks, but buy products to put them on unnaturally? HahahaIHateMyLifeAndCareerChoices

I am a lip liner stan and LOVE to have a statement lip, so it’s extra hateful that when it’s cold or I’m sick, my lips suffer the most.

This is how bad my lips can get. They literally have the same texture of Year 6 book report you ripped up and scrubbed a teabag over in an attempt to make look old. Haggard!

I can’t risk a defined, matte line emphasising how fucked up my lips are, so I opt for a blurred edge, soft focus lip. To achieve this, I start by buffing whatever cream product I have on my cheeks all over, then focusing a darker, hydrating lipstick in the centre of my mouth and fading out. I finish with a healthy slug of a hydrating lip gloss to add back in the moisture my grid is craaaving. 

My blusher topped with a bit of Illamasqua’s sheer veil lipstick in Seville, finished with Fenty gloss bomb in Sweet Mouth. Me mouth does look sweet and all, doesn’t it?

Once the rest of your face is looking fresh, where to take the look is down to how ya feel. For eyes, you could aim for bright, healthy distractrion from your crispy face by doing a bit of light crease definition with a POPPING inner corner highlight. My go-to, well rested look is a bit of bronzer through my crease, with a white based highlight shade on the inner corner. It’s easy and, if I do say so myself, it looks angelic. 

Can you believe this glowing vision is the same feral, dry witch from picture one?

Or, you could fully embrace the sickly look and do a Byojaku makeup look. Byojaku means sickly or weak in Japanese, and after a 2010s makeup editorial in Ranzuki magazine, byojaku makeup became a trend; red, sore looking under eyes are drawn on and puffiness is emphasised, the skin is pale, and lips are smudged. There’s been a bit of a resurgence of this style of makeup on Tiktok, with people drawing attention to their eyebags with colourful eyeshadow, as opposed to covering them. 

To start my sickly glam, I built over my existing makeup, taking off my lip and knocking out the brightness of my blusher with some more CC cream. I added loads of deep red eyeshadow under my eyes. 

Don’t worry about being too neat here. Honestly it’s probably the messier, the better. 

Once the red is down, blend out and onto your cheeks with a paler, more pinky strawberry shade. I added some more depth with a burgundy close to my lash line, on both the top and bottom of my eye. 

The flu, but make it fashion. 

For the lip, I swiped a bit of deep red lipstick on the centre of my mouth, then blended it towards the edges using the fluffy brush, dirty with the strawberry colour from my cheeks. I swirled this brush on the tip of my nose too, for an even more extreme chapped, overblown nose look.

To ensure my makeup looks intentional and not like a belated, smeared Halloween look, I finished with lashing of lipgloss, some black liner and false eyelashes. 

I dunno whether I’ll end up wearing this look to my work meetings, but it’s deff a prospect for winter nights out where I want to look snatched, but the cold weather is destroying me. What’s upsetting is that men at my work meetings would be less traumatised by me with a face full of blown out red eyeshadow, than me with no makeup on at all. We love the patriarchy!!!!

Go forth and utilise these dry skin tips, I’m sorry that we live in a society where even when we feel like shit, femme people are expected to not LOOK like shit. Agh! 

Got any other beauty questions? Know a brand with a banging BB cream? Get in touch by emailing hello@polyesterzine.com with subject line AGONY AL, or DMing @lipglosslezza on Instagram 

XOXO, Agony Al