Let's make-up with Bina Khan: Finding your look

This week, I demonstrate the mistakes we have all made on our path to stylish enlightenment.

Thanks to the brutal invasiveness of the internet, we are able to know every celebrity secret that is out there. Though I feel that poking our noses into a singer or actor’s personal life is vile, I do however, enjoy having an all-access pass to people’s style evolutions.

This week, I thought I would use one such journey to demonstrate the mistakes we have all made on our path to stylish enlightenment. I have selected Jennifer Lopez because a) she looks a little desi, b) she has always had a brilliant set of bones and c) she doesn’t appear to have had any plastic surgery. It looks to me like her transformation has been brought about by good make-up and proper styling. Here is what we can learn from her early mistakes and later triumphs. Does anything look familiar? 

Finding your look



1. A very sweet looking, young Jennifer ­— she looks beautiful with all her glorious assets clearly visible. But an overly-defined, dark and lip-linered pout is taking the emphasis away from an alluringly angled eye shape and cheekbone. The lip colour ages her and brings out the darker hues in her skin, pigmenting the skin around the mouth and under the inexplicably ignored eyes.



2. A classic lesson in everything that was wrong with the late ‘90s. Overly-plucked brows, muddy-coloured, one tone make-up and a ghastly dark lip liner and gloss combination leave a very young Jennifer looking ancient and washed-out. And a little like she has been eating paan!



3. Here, we start to see the beginnings of the successful hallmarks of the Jlo look, though she looks far from what we are used to. While the contouring and highlighting of her mouth, nose and lip areas are decidedly much more successful, the decision to under play her glorious cheekbones and the fantastic angle of the underneath of her eyes leaves her still largely unrecognisable.



4. By this point, we can at last recognise the face that we have come to know, largely because the cheekbones have at long last been emphasised, as have her eyes, from both above and below. The lack of contouring on her nose, the lack of false lashes or mascara, the overly plucked brows (not to mention the comically bad tonging of her hair) leave her a few key steps away from the look that is just within reach.



5. And here, we are at long last — the glowy, girl next door, clean Jlo look.  The softer brows, softer hair, all over glow and strong contouring bring the look home. But she didn’t stop there. Once she was done with the movie roles that cast her as the girl next door, or the maid, Ms Lopez decided to open the door to glamour.



6. All of the hallmarks of the Lopez look are maintained and then amped up even further. The contouring of the face is a lesson in the art; the very sharp, luminous highlights of the cheekbone and inner V of her eye, make her skin look younger than it did in her earlier pictures. The false lashes and eye make-up (both above and below) show off to perfection the divine angle and shape of the eyes, perfectly framed by the softer brows. A splash of peach on the lips and on the apples of the cheek, balance the beige and grey of the eye creating a look that brings out the best in her face.



7. Demonstrating just how important the underneath of the eye is to a shape like Ms Lopez’s, this look manages to make her look positively doe-eyed. To modernise this smokey look, strong luminous white inner V highlights on the eyes have been added. The contouring is, as always, key (as is the nude lip and strong, but soft brow).



8. Following the adage that one feature must be worked on at a time and not both, here we see Jennifer with a bold and beautiful red lip and a neutral eye. However, some epic individual lashes have been added, above and below, to give the eyes some serious oomph. A strong but soft brow, clean, glowing highlights and some truly heavenly, warm, sun kissed contouring completes this fabulous look.

Bina Khan is a make-up artist, photographer, skin technician and writer who owns a salon and photography studio in Karachi.

All images and content are the property of Bina Khan. Any unauthorised use of the same is illegal and liable for prosecution.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2013.

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