Now is the season to be cautious with bronzer. Gone are those long summer days of sun-warmed skin when practically any bronzer made itself at home on our faces without stripes. As winter approaches we should perhaps turn to our bronzers with a different goal in mind. Health and glow can come from a good cream blusher (Rose Inc’s are wonderful) and bronzer becomes a contouring tool; a way to support the architecture of our faces rather than enhance a tan. Because we don’t have a tan. Mores the pity.
Anyway, we could turn our attention to the raft of cream-to-powder bronzers out there. It’s easy to be scared of them because they have a rather different personality to the powder bronzers we have ben whacking on, drunk, in the night club loo since we were teenagers. There are boons: cream bronzers don’t shatter or crumble and they are fantastically buildable and – crucially – blendable. They also offer a kind of grown-up polish that is rather confidence-giving.
Two spring to mind: Chanel’s Les Beiges Bronzing cream is vast and warm and generous. A vast kabuki brush swirled around the big pot and then swirled all over your face will take you from a flat medieval, winter pallor to something much more human and Riveira. Health and subtle glamour from Chanel.
The newer Nars Bronzing Cream offering – is perhaps more impactful when it comes to emphasising cheekbones and sharpening jawline. The Laguna 01 shade has an effective dull quality that rejects the light to that features can be chiselled. And, if you think you’ve gone too far, a blusher brush will blend the bronzer back into touch.
Go in store for these rather than online. And ask the shop people to escort you to the door so that you can try these bronzers in daylight because artificial light is where expensive mistakes are made. If you try them in the cold and unforgiving light of day then you know you are safe to whack on your make-up on the tube at 7:45am without suffering – any further – humiliation later in the day.
Chanel Les Beiges Bronzing Cream 30g, £43
Nars Bronzing Cream 19g, £32.50