This Is the Key to Cate Blanchett's Subtly Colorful Oscars Makeup
It's all about balance.
Oftentimes when it comes to a makeup scheme, there’s one focal point on the face — one thing the artist opts to play up. In Cate Blanchett’s case, her beauty guru Jeanine Lobell took the opposite approach. "I wanted it to be balanced," she tells Pret-a-Reporter, adding, "so the lip and the cheek and the eye were all in the same family. Sometimes you do a smoky eye and a really nude lip to pop the eyes, but I wanted them all to have equal play in a way."
The overarching idea was to give the newly bobbed Carol nominee and two-time Oscar winner a romantic, sexy look using somewhat monochromatic color. "Even though the color of her dress was quite a statement, I felt she needed to have some color in the makeup as well."
Ultimately Lobell chose mauve, aubergine hues that were deeper around the eyes and lighter on the cheeks. "There was color across the board," she says. On Blanchett’s eyes, she wanted a fuzzy effect, so she blended two cream shadows, Giorgio Armani Eye Tint in #8 and #10 ($39), the plummy latter shade as a liner, under the lash line and wrapping up into her creases. She used the rosy beige #8 in the center of the actress’ lids to make them shimmery and diffused, and blended it up to the brow bone using her finger.
After SK-II’s plumping, dewy Facial Treatment Essence ($165) and R.N.A. Power Cream ($149), Lobell added color to Blanchett’s cheeks with Giorgio Armani Cheek Fabric blush in #506 ($48), in the same color palette as the rest of the plum-inspired shades. She created more of a fuzzy feeling with a bit of powder on top. And finally, Lobell lined and filled in her lips with a matching pencil — so when her lipstick faded she wouldn’t be left with a ring — and applied a pinkish hue, Rouge d’Armani in #103 ($37). The perfect almost nude.
