Bobbi Brown’s Top Makeup Tips and Beauty Secrets

Bobbi: One product is not enough. A combo of pencil and powder in the same color works best to shape and strengthen brows for a denser look. Start with brow pencil the color of your natural hair, and choose a texture that’s dry, not silky, here so it won’t smudge. Do feathery hair-like strokes on and between hairs, working from the inside corner out. Next, apply shadow — eye shadow is OK, you don’t need a special brow powder — over it with a slanted eye brush to fill and intensify the shape.

Our faces have a lot going on between sun damage, redness, broken capillaries and brown spots, so how much foundation coverage do we choose?

Bobbi: I suggest a tinted moisturizer to give skin a fresh hydrated look, followed by a stick foundation on spots where you need extra coverage. Too often liquid foundations look heavy and masklike on us. The tinted moisturizer gives skin an authentic texture, while the more opaque stick foundation applied only where needed takes care of any redness or brown spots. Be sure to choose a stick shade that’s the color of your skin — this is not a concealer — and test in-store to find your shade. A test on your skin is very different from an online color swatch.

What’s the most important thing you can do at 50 to define and strengthen eyes that are saggy, hooded or deep-set?

Bobbi: Make sure you wear eyeliner and define the entire upper lid from inner corner to very outside corner. Lining halfway is a mistake lots of women make, and it really makes the eyes look smaller. If your eyes are hooded or saggy, gently pull the lid smooth and start lining from mid-lid to outer corner. Then go back and do inner corner to mid-lid before reapplying the liner the entire length. Go thick enough to see the liner when your deep-set eyes are open. I wear brown during the day for a softer, more natural look, but always black at night. Then add two or three coats of black thickening mascara to finish.

Should we stick to neutral matte powder shadows or can we play around with cream shadow and trendy colors?