Respect My Face!

Here are the highlights from Japan’s beauty magazines MAQUIA, VoCE and Biteki…

Best of 2009 Product Round-up

Pretty much all magazines have a round-up for best products of the year.  Th products are usually picked by beauty editors, makeup artists, celebrities and readers.  The following is Biteki‘s best-of report…

やや派手囲み目 (Slightly Showy Cat Eye) Makeup Tutorial

やや派手 means slightly showy; 囲み目 is a style of eye makeup characterized by well-defined eye liner for both upper and lower lash lines and eye colors blended out to the outer corner of the eye.  This “cat eye” makeup has been very popular in Japan (Google 囲み目 and you’ll find all kind of photos and tutorials), and MAQUIA offers a more dramatic variation…

MAQUIA also has a tutorial on vamping up your lashes to make the smokey eye makeup even more dramatic…

Japan’s take on metrosexual

Men’s care has been part of the Japanese beauty culture for a long time, well before we finally came up with a word for it.  I remember when I was living in Japan more than 12 years ago, there were already a whole array of men’s products available at supermarkets and drugstores.  In contrast only recently the word “skincare” for us means more than shaving cream and after shave; and finally we can find decent selections of men’s skincare products in US drugstores.  There are also a number of publications on men’s health, fashion and beauty (yes, beauty!), but ever now and then, the girls beauty magazines features some guys’ stuff.  Here’s VoCE‘s feature on makeup for guys…

And a beauty editor’s (for Men’s Club magazine) beauty routine for the day…

Well, that’s for this month… Until next time, じゃまたね!