Felicia Walker Benson, editor of popular ThisThatBeauty blog, offers top winter beauty advice
Felicia Walker Benson's popular blog ThisThatBeauty helps teach women how to get gorgeous. Founded in 2005, her online platform has propelled the makeup aficionado and style writer into realms far beyond the Internet.
As for makeup trends, we generally see a shift to more berry-toned lips for winter. I mean, this is a no-brainer. Season after season it’s the same thing. You’re definitely going to see more berries, reds and plums. I recommend doing dark lips. They are intimidating, so start with a little bit of a stain, or a richer tone of lipstick instead. Dab it on your lips to bring up the color. That way you can ease yourself into the trend.
Some people think black women are afraid to wear make-up, or less likely to. Do you think this perception is accurate?
Oh, hogwash! I’m even tempted to call malarky (go Biden!). I honestly don’t think that black women are afraid to wear makeup, or that they’re less likely to wear makeup. But I do have some observations about black women and how we wear make up. I think as far as lipstick is concerned, because we generally have fuller lips, there is a bit of hesitancy to wear brighter colors.
I think as women get older, we become more comfortable in our skin and embrace who we are. If you’ve got full voluptuous lips, by the time you turn 30 you become very comfortable with that. I think you should not feel like you can’t wear color. It’s a matter of wearing those things in the way that make you you. It’s the same with makeup. So if you have fuller lips and you want to embrace richer colors, my personal opinion and recommendation would be to try less glossy formulas. Sometimes the really glossy formulas seem to amplify the volume that’s already there.
I think another another area of makeup where all women are very hesitant and reluctant is around foundation. For years we’ve learned that there’s one perfect foundation shade [for you]. This is something women of color probably feel impacts them the most. But, women of all ethnicities deal with this. I’m really delighted to see that more make up companies are offering better options for foundation.
How should someone who is interested in wearing more make-up get started? What, to you, is the biggest benefit of wearing cosmetics?
Women come to wear makeup for a number of reasons. Some were born wanting to experiment. It is just in their DNA. Other women don’t experiment with makeup until they’re starting job interviews after college, or starting a new job. Maybe they are recently divorced and feel like they want to shake things up a little bit. Some have imperfections they want to conceal.
There are so many resources out here today to help you with that. Clearly blogs are very influential. Lots of blogs give step-by-step tutorials on how to do makeup. YouTube is also an incredible resource.
My advice would be to take baby steps. A very easy way to amp up your look is to put on mascara and a nice lip gloss creating those two points of interest. You’ve accentuated your eyes by lengthening and darkening your lashes. That doesn’t really require a whole lot of skill and lipgloss is very easy to put on. You can also learn to groom your eyebrows. That’s something that you can do to really frame your eyes and accentuate your face without applying lots of color cosmetics. I know a lot of women are color shy.
What’s next for you?
Oh boy, what’s not next? I definitely see the further expansion of my brand. ThisThatBeauty was started as a beauty blog to share my fashion and beauty discoveries when I was a full-time corporate girl and running my blog on the side as an outlet for my passion. From there the blog has grown tremendously from fashion and beauty to also covering fitness, lifestyle, food and wine. I now have contributors so I get to add other points of view as well. I am now not just in the role of contributor, but also the editor. The blog has become a mirror of my overall lifestyle and what I am learning is that my followers are really interested in the things that I am interested in. Beauty kind of draws them in. I acknowledge the power of my brand and I am working on opportunities to further expand that brand in the areas of television and radio. And there is a book in the works.
Follow Alexis Garrett Stodghill on Twitter at @lexisb.
