The Beauty Sleuth

As a makeup artist, I do believe that Beauty is Life. Why else would I dedicate thousands of hours, endless days and big chunks of my life learning all there is to learn about this business—Testing driving products, experimenting with new textures and colors and working on all kinds of amazing subjects to boot. Not bad for an art school grad who had no idea this industry even existed. In my future I imagined I’d end up curating fine art in a Canadian gallery somewhere. Funny how life is, or is it fate?

On one of my recent strolls through Barneys, I came across a beauty brand that I hadn’t heard of before— Beauty is Life. Right away I loved the brand name and was eager to see if it stood up to my expectations. I was intrigued and did a little investigative digging on the creator of the line. It was designed by the German television makeup artist, Beatrix Isabel Lie, who aside from being an accomplished artist herself, founded an academy for makeup art and image consultation in Hamburg in 1978. She’s not only prolific in cosmetic application and training development but she has also been a longtime specialist in a dermatological skin clinic in Germany since the late 60’s. Ms. Lie is testament that passion and innovation in any given field do co-exist, resulting in a cause and affect scenario that can be compelling and exciting for the industry. Her product line is based on her 9R- typology teaching philosophy, which at its core, covers all existing pigmentation types regarding tone value. This was my kind of makeup artist—As an art student I did extensive study in color theory and values and to this day, I select my color choices for all of my subjects based on this education.

As far as product goes, I am alway looking for the basics like incredible foundations, concealers and powder because in my opinion, if the skin doesn’t looking right, no amount of color product will correct that. Flawless skin has always been my beat and I work really hard to create it (regardless of whether my model has ideal skin or not, skin always needs a little love for any on-camera work) be it a super natural looking finish or full coverage glamour. For me two things become incredibly important— One: that the skin look flawless after foundation/concealer/powder application and two: that the color and texture of the products used match seamlessly to the subjects own natural skin. The finished effect creates the illusion of absolutely perfect skin and is the ideal canvas for all color products.

While perusing the BIL collection, I did a patch test on my wrist. I really liked the feeling of the cream Camouflage, Cover cream pen and loose powder but I wouldn’t know for sure until I test drove it on several different models, under numerous conditions. The opportunity was right around the corner, as I had an advertising shoot the following day. After testing on several models with various skin types and colors, I was very pleased with the results. The concealers are highly pigmented and while they tend to be quite dry (a little under eye cream before concealer works wonders) once on the skin, it stayed put and didn’t crease. I liked that it could be layered up, meaning that you could build coverage depending on necessity. For the cream foundation, it has amazing pigment and was easy to apply. I was able to build the color where I needed it and burnish it to a flawless finish. The powder is fine-milled and very silky and blends into all cream product seamlessly creating a beautiful, baby soft finish that lasted. In essence, this foundation-concealer-powder trilogy have become staples in my makeup kit.

If you are looking for a high powered, top performing beauty line, this one’s for you.
To learn more about the Beauty Is Life academy check out: www.beautyislife.de and for product availability Stateside see: www.barneys.com