Beauty / Mela Magic: Celebrate The Festival Season With These Beauty Tips

Mela Magic: Celebrate The Festival Season With These Beauty Tips

Beauty Jun 11, 2019

by Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

Some of our happiest memories are from festivals where summer vibes fuse with creativity. From melas to music festivals and more, this is the time to celebrate your inner artist! Pay homage to Bollywood queens such as Helen and Sharmila Tagore with colours and textures which are front and centre in summer work perfectly on South Asian skin tones. Celebrate The Festival Season With These Beauty Tips

Festival beauty is renowned for its creativity and theatricality, in particular as interpreted at internationally-renowned music festivals such Coachella. Given a festival’s typically open vibe and infusion of creative arts, you can create your own festival beauty with unexpected colour combinations and textures.

MELA MAKE-UP—SNEAKY CREATIVITY

Melas are an excellent opportunity to explore South Asian cultures through music, food and mingling with others who share our multi-layered identities as children of immigrants.

Culturally speaking, melas are family-friendly gatherings and because of the aunties, you may feel that you need to reign in your more daring creative impulses. I say develop a monochromatic look using various shades of pink and take beauty inspiration from the Bollywood film actresses from the sixties who just rocked colour and still look graceful.

After preparing your skin, set your eyebrows with a coloured gel such as Benefit 3D Browtones Eyebrow Enhancer in … magenta! When I discovered this product, I wondered if I would look like a person who did not realize that she had coloured her eyebrows a bright pink shade. After I tried it, I was thrilled to discover that the brow gel adds a hint of colour, so depending where you stand in the sunlight the brow gel will reflect and the eye brows will look slightly magenta. It is a subtle, sophisticated departure from clear and dark brown gel brows.

**Celebrate The Festival Season With These Beauty Tips: Benefit 3D Browtones Eyebrow Enhancer**. Photo Credit: www.benefitcosmetics.com

In terms of eye make-up, pink eye shadow could easily slide into the “don’t go there” category. I recommend that you should line the eyes with an intense black liquid eye liner such as Kat Von D Ultra Ink Liner in Trooper Black. It looks like a classic pointed tip marker and it glides along the eye line without any tugging. The colour sets in seconds and looks intense. I love to create an exaggerated cat eye, like Sharmila Tagore, by pulling my eye lid taught and the gliding the liner across the eye line, re-angling the liner to flick upwards a few millimetres beyond the corner of the eye. To ensure the correct thickness, repeat the exercise by drawing a similar line parallel to the first line, ensuring that there is no space between the lines.

I then take inspiration from the incomparable Helen’s eye make-up from the classic film Caravan when she dances and mesmerizes to the song Piya Tu Ab To Aaja , in which she rocks a strong cat eye and loads of colour. I interpret the colour element by using a matte pink eye pencil such as Make Up For Ever Artist Color Pencil in No Boundaries Blush and draw a third line in parallel to my beefed-up cat eye. The matte, pencil texture looks slightly powdery and vivid against the stark black liquid liner.

I finish the eyes with black mascara because I want the pink to remain the focus of the eyes.

The cheeks are also part of the fun, and I think a great summer purchase is the Benefit Cheekleaders in Pink Squad because it contains 4 shades of pink blush (Galifornia, Tickle, Dandelion and Dallas) and the famous Hoola bronzer, all of which flatter South Asian skin tones. If you skin tone is medium-to-light, I recommend swirling Dandelion on the cheeks and highlighting with Tickle. If your skin tone is dark, swirl Galifornia on the cheeks and since it is tinged with gold, the highlighter is built-in to the blush.

The lips should also be pink, and for all South Asian beauties, I recommend trying MAC Powder Kiss Lipstick in Fall in Love, a deep watermelon shade that is equal parts vivid and classic. I admit that when I saw the shade I was afraid that I was applying a pink highlighter to my lips that would soon shrivel. Fall in Love corrected me quickly because this matte lipstick glides on, sets and feels moist! Further, the pink just looked like the perfect pink melon, and is on point for summer.

BIG CITY MUSIC FESTIVALS

Various music festivals electrify the city especially in the summer. The beauty question, is how do we marry the creativity with city chicness? The answer lies in soft contrasts and an eye intense look.

For a cool summer evening when you want to spend more time being outside rather than in front of a mirror, I suggest that you do your complexion, set your eye brows with a clear gel and then go to town with colour on the eyelids.

What I love about the Kat Von D Vegan Eyeshadow Palette (limited edition) is that it embraces primary colours and infuses them with a hint of shimmer. The palette comes with a adorable built-in mirror that looks like a heart and next to it is this tip: “Best applied with fingers”. Amongst the 10 shades, Earthling, a deep grass green, and Mercy, a cherry red, evoke the colour wheel. I tap the eye shadow using my ring finger on my left hand (it has the least pressure so it will be gentle on the eye lid) and apply Earthling once on my mobile lids and then Mercy in the creases. I complete the look with the liquid liner, and black mascara.

The vivid eye demands a softer face, and I like to tap Hoola on the raised planes of my face (forehead, cheekbones, chin) to add a sun kissed look. I then finish with glossy, barely coloured lips so that the eyes remain the focal point of the face. I am pleased to report that Clarins Instant Light Lip Comfort Oil, is equal parts shine, hydration and subtle colour. My lips have a medium pigmentation but Red Berry added a delectable touch of colour. The fat doe applicator feels like a massage on the lips making them look instantly pouty.

FESTIVAL FEELINGS

Festivals are like magic because they are a fusion of creativity and summer vibes. Depending on the type of festival, you can adjust your look but there are always ways to infuse your creativity. Thankfully our skin tones are designed to celebrate colour and festivals are a great place to highlight this beauty asset.

Main Image Photo Credit: www.maccosmetics.com, www.clarins.ca

Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

Author

Meena (@meenalaregina) always loved the idea of exploring the non-conventional idea of beauty. Having grown up as a pimply chubby teenager, she wanted to see the change in the world that best reflected your uniqueness as well. Her well-received collection of blogs where she tries on various beauty p...

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Mela Magic: Celebrate The Festival Season With These Beauty Tips

by Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

Meena Khan | Features Editor - Beauty

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