Five French Girl Beauty Tips

Every time I'm in Paris I get so wowed by French Girl Beauty. Parisienne girls are so delectably chic, yet it never looks contrived, it always seems so effortless.

Clemence Poesy

I've never, ever run into Parisienne girls sporting the makeup overload that you see here. (which doesn't mean it doesn't happen, I've just never seen it).

street cred, Paris

Opaque, overthick foundation, Instagram styled contour, or clowning, or baking or whatever the idiocy du jour, just doesn't show up on the streets of Paris. (Apart from on the faces of the IG/YT enthusiasts visiting town.)

street style Paris

My Parisienne friend Emmanuelle told me that her hometown squad think Kardashian styled makeup is like a horror movie.
It's too big, too much, hides the girl and makes her look lacking in self confidence.

 I asked her for a list of beauty products that the average chic Parisienne girl uses to pull off that effortless, gorgeous, killer cool, French girl beauty.

Marion Cotillard

She told me that to a French girl looking too perfect feels too fake, but that they wholeheartedly believe in great skin. "Beautiful skin is everything,"

Tip One: With that in mind French girls take care of their skin, making sure it never looks stripped or dried out by always using a facial oil.

Personally I like dry finish oils so that my skin doesn't look liquefied or slimey. My favorites are Tatcha Camellia Oil which is a super luxe skin care product from Japan, and Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse, which is France's leading beauty oil. I am obsessed with the gold version of this incredible oil, which not only hydrates but also illuminates the skin.

Both of these have a dry finish, so makeup not only glides on after you apply it, but it also holds all day.

Audrey Tatou

Tip Two: Next, rather than a thick or heavy foundation, French girls prefer to give the illusion of perfect, bare skin by using a sheer and lightweight product like a BB or CC cream.

I use BB's over CC's, mostly because I haven't found a CC that I'm crazy about.

For a lighter cover try Ren BB Cream, if you want a little more coverage try MAC BB Cream.

Tip Three: French girls don't get crazy with concealer, many preferring to use none at all because a little shade under the eye makes you look real. (I'm looking a little too real these days. This is one step I can't get too French beauty with!)

Tip Four: Mascara is never thick or clumpy. A chic Parisienne prefers a defined and slightly elongated fringe of lashes. Try a mascara like Lancôme Definicils.

Marion Cotillard

Tip Five: The perfect way to pull the entire effortless chic look together? A red lip. Rather than a gooey, glossy red lip look for a soft, hydrating matte red lip. 
My personal favorites are Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution Red Carpet Red, which is a true red. MAC Ruby Woo, which is a blue based red, and for my golden skinned girls MAC Lady Danger, which has an orange base.

Lea Seydoux

The 10 Best BB and CC Creams For Summer

Are you in the market for a new BB or CC cream?

Check out the options that Vogue.com considers to be 

The 10 Best BB and CC Creams For Summer

The official coming of summer has us embracing a newly pared-down routine—streamlining our overloaded makeup bags in favor of multitasking options that channel the almost-bare mood of the season. Translation: If you’re still using the same creamy, medium coverage foundation you swore by all spring, it’s time to lighten up. Fortunately, the newest wave of beauty balms and color correctors—more commonly known as BB and CC creams—pack a checklist of benefits into a single tube while remaining virtually invisible on the skin for straight-from-the-beach touchups. Chanel CC Cream’s featherweight, pigment-evening formula prescription provides SPF 50 along with antiaging peach extract and moisturizing hyaluronic acid. Physicians Formula Super CC+ Eye Cream SPF 30 relieves puffiness and blurs lines—ensuring eyes remain as bright as their cloudless, sun-drenched surroundings—while Giorgio Armani’s supernaturally luminous offeringleaves skin with the kind of glow that rivals a good facialist’s work. Here are the ten tinted balms and creams we’re stocking up on this vacation season.

L’Oréal Magic Skin Beautifier BB Cream, $11
Chanel CC Cream Complete Correction Sunscreen Broad Spectrum SPF 50, $55
Physicians Formula Super CC+ Eye Cream SPF 30, $13
La Roche Posay Effaclar BB Blur Cream Mousse, $30
Tarte Amazonian Clay BB Illuminating Moisturizer, $32
Bobbi Brown BB Cream SPF 35, $20
Peter Thomas Roth CC Cream, $48
Dior Diorsnow UV Shield BB Crème Broad Spectrum SPF 50, $55
Kate Somerville IllumiKate CC Cream Broad Spectrum SPF 50, $48

Giorgio Armani Luminessence CC Color Control Bright Moisturizer SPF 35, $52

What Is A BB Cream?

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past few years, you've probably been hearing about
the giant new craze in the beauty industry called BB Cream.

image from Clarins Beauty Balm Campaign

People are always asking me about these multi purpose, magic creams, so here is a little break down on them:

BB stands for Beauty Balm.

Essentially its a tinted moisturizer that also protects the skin, a sunscreen that also smooths out wrinkles, a foundation that also gets rid of age spots and a primer that has antioxidants.
Beauty Balms are multi tasking work horses that ultimately give you gorgeous, flawless looking skin.

If your skin is normal to dry you can use a moisturizer underneath.
If your skin is normal to oily you can use them alone.
You can use them as a primer under a thin veil of foundation, or you can use them alone instead of a tinted moisturizer.

I was never a fan of tinted moisturizers, as I found it nearly impossible to have an even color, all day with them. By contrast a BB Cream gives you a very thin, sheer, even color, that holds all day.
They generally come in only a few shades - light, medium and dark. (Some lines have a light/medium and a medium/dark as well). The magic lies in the product's "self adjusting, tone blending" ingredients. Somehow they adjust themselves slightly to fit your exact skin tone. You never wind up with color that's streaky or off-tone to your own skin.
What's even more exciting is that they have light diffusing properties that blur out fine lines and wrinkles and make your skin look smoother.
I wear BB's every day instead of foundation. They give the impression of perfect, even skin.
Even though I wore BB cream all winter long, they are also the perfect travel companion, and ideal for the hot summer months.

A new(ish) BB Cream that has all my attention right now is made by REN. I'm a little obsessed with the entire REN line, as they are a clean skincare company.
REN is all about the three P's: Performance, Purity and Pleasure.
The products are very high performance (I cannot be bothered with any skincare product that I don't see immediate results with. - Its all about the performance), the purity lies in the fact that all natural plant and mineral derived actives are used, with no skin-unfriendly synthetic additives, and the pleasure is all bound up in the smell and the texture of the products. They are just lovely.

Anyway, The REN BB Cream is made with natural mineral pigments that give a lightweight coverage plus has an adaptive color technology, that allows the cream to adjust to most skin types.
You get a glorious satiny finish, the skin looks radiant as well as firmer and more toned.
Another cool thing about the REN BB Cream is that the company looked at ways to harness the benefits of the sun and incorporate them into the product. The cream is made with Noni extract fluorophores, which is a fluorescent chemical compound found in Noni fruit, that can absorb ultraviolet light rays and transform them into a beneficial, elastin boosting red light.
Red light has been shown in studies to stimulate elastin in skin. A double blind full face study showed that faces treated for 60 days with the extract and sunscreen showed a 50% increase in elastin levels.

REN BB Cream also has a mineral derived UVA/UVB protection broad spectrum SPF 15.
As far as I'm concerned the more SPF you can layer on, the better!

You can find REN products at Sephora, or online at www.RenSkinCare.com