Lancôme
- I have hyperpigmentation and dark circles due to my genetics and years of acne.
- Color-correcting in makeup is the use of red, green, purple, and yellow pigments to conceal the look of scarring, redness, acne, dark circles, and more.
- Indian skin differs from European and darker skin tones in that it has a unique combination of undertones the beauty market has not yet mastered yet.
- I curated a routine of five products that conceal and blur the look of my acne scarring and dark circles.
For years, my makeup routine was all about the challenge of seeing how much makeup I could pile on top of my pimples and my brown skin underneath. This usually meant I would begin my day with a combination of brightly hued primers, concealers, and foundation caked on though they would inevitably melt off halfway through the day.
Post-acne I never really stopped - I had my scarring to cover up, and over the years, I added caking my genetically dark under-eyes with makeup to the list. Bottles of foundation and tubes of concealer came and went with frequency. I tried all sorts of different forms of cover-up, but the two things I could count on were that my scars would just appear unnaturally grey under a fog of products and that most of the product would be off by the time happy hour rolled around.
When color-correcting products became popular about a year ago, I figured it was easy enough. I put a bright red shade on top of my dark circles and scars to balance out darkness, and then covered the red with concealer to cover my insecurities - often coloring outside the lines to extend to my unblemished skin. But makeup artist David Maderich, previously Prince's makeup artist and whose work can now be seen on "The Real Housewives of Potomac," warns against this for Indian skin in particular. "Indian skin shades are hard to find from a bottle. You have to mix a lot of different colors - yellow under the eye, and a little bit of orange, yellow, and gold help to balance out pigmentation," he says.
The two biggest lessons I learned from Maderich were that less is more when it comes to longevity of products on my skin, and that color-correcting on my uniquely brown skin means not just one color-correcting product in an orange/red hue, but a combination of that with yellow and gold pigments that combine to get the idyllic "I Woke Up Like This" look.
Here are the five products I use to blur my dark circles and acne scars in the order in which I use them:
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