Making Faces

The first section offers, in his own words, Aucoin's favorite ideas, tricks, and techniques for enhancing, defining, and altering facial features with makeup. You'll learn how to care for your skin, what foundation to use with your skin type, and transformational magic for that central player in the drama of beauty: eyes. Through his gallery of noncelebrity before-and-afters, Aucoin shows clearly how to use his fundamentals to achieve dozens of different looks.

The gorgeous final chapter reads like a list of exotic characters in a play--the Vamp, the Siren, the Diva.... In fact, such celebrities as Isabella Rosselini, Demi Moore, and Nicole Kidman pose as these dramatic, splendidly made-up characters. These sumptuous photographs are accompanied by full-page illustrations listing the "ingredients" required to create these looks as well as simple directions for achieving them. The introduction by the author, at once amusing and endearing ("...trying to conceal the fact that I was a gay, effeminate, hyperactive, adopted child with a serious lisp in southern Louisiana would have been like trying to hide Dolly Parton in a string bikini!"), and Aucoin's commentary throughout, makes Making Faces a unique reference book--beautiful, informative, and personal.

I was especially pleased to see Aucoin's techniques demonstrated not just on glamorous stars but also on normal people of all ages and sizes and both sexes. He's got a lot of common sense, too; he puts only minimal makeup on his teenage models (they still look like teenagers after he's done -- what a concept!) and he doesn't think much of child beauty pageants.

The book isn't perfect, though. Aucoin advocates putting eyeliner inside the lash line. Most eye doctors will tell you that's a bad idea, and so will most of us who lived through the first time this idea became popular. Pinkeye, anyone?

He also doesn't put much emphasis on choosing the right colours for the reader's complexion. He advocates complete freedom, which of course is fine for someone experienced with choosing their makeup colours but doesn't help the neophyte who needs advice.

But those are pretty minor complaints. This book is a fantastic tool for the person with some experience in applying cosmetics. I recommend it highly.