Paris Dreaming by Katrina Lawrence

Author:Katrina Lawrence
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

Sephora is to beauty lovers what a confiserie is to a French kid: a heart-fluttering, mouth-watering array of sensory overload. The first Sephora was founded on the Champs-Élysées, but we ended up in the store under the Louvre. ‘Only in Paris could you sell lipstick beneath the greatest museum in the world without it seeming like a desecration,’ noted Mel, Karlie’s official maquilleuse for the big day. Switching to artist mode, she examined the varying pigments and intensities of the blushes on offer as studiously as she would have viewed the French masterpieces above, and mixed creams together on the back of her hand, palette-like, until hitting upon the perfect peachy-pink, which she blended into Karlie’s cheeks. And just like that, all traces of weariness seemed magically to dissolve. ‘Now that’s what I call a work of art,’ she declared.

Blush has long been a French woman’s secret to looking in peak form, a way to mimic the healthy effects of the outdoor run for which she never goes. It’s also one of those fabulous French paradoxes that something as seemingly giddily girlish as blush can, in the right hands, become a powerful weapon for a Parisienne. For the Marquise de Pompadour, rouge was the enduring symbol of her fabled charm, the very attribute that propelled her to power in the first place. She was more than just a pretty pink-flushed face; for example, she sweet-talked the king into endorsing the encyclopaedia (penned by her philosopher friends), which he had originally thought to be dangerously enlightening for his simpleminded subjects. Pompadour so believed in the life-enhancing powers of blush that she was still requesting it on her deathbed.

The painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who came into her artistic own around the time the marquise was applying rouge for the final time, ushered in the modern era of blush with her dreamy pastel portrayals of the beautiful people of Paris. Her most famous subject was the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, and the portraitist doubled as the unpopular queen’s public relations minister, working hard to paint her in a soft and flattering light. Scarlet circles of blush had long been the exclusive stamp of aristocrats — with their preening, powdered ways — so a sheerer flush of cheek colour was one way to revamp the queen, make her appear naturally warm. Alas, sometimes even the greatest blush masterstroke isn’t enough to save a girl.

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