The relationship we have with our skintones… It’s difficult, really. There’s the stage when you’re desperately trying to figure out what your exact skintone is to find a good foundation match. Then there’s the stage when you’re bemoaning your shade – too pasty white, too yellow, too pink, too mottled, too ruddy. And then there comes the day when you’re totally puzzled because you’re reading a website or a magazine that tells you how to find the perfect red lipstick for your skintone, and you recognize that you don’t fall into any categories they offer.
First stage: Play around!
Here’s a truth that’s really unpopular with every makeup guru – in the end, nobody is able to tell you what foundation matches your skintone but you. Watch every youtube video on foundation matching, read every blogpost with their tips and tricks about it, get matched at the counter – it’s you who has to decide if you’re comfortable with a match. People match their foundation to their face, to the skin on their jawline, to balance, to even, to enhance, to seem ‘healthier’ i.e. darker or lighter – it’s you who has to decide what you want. Best advice? Go out and play. Get different foundations, get different shades, different textures, experiment. Trial and error, which is time-consuming and very likely expensive.
Second stage: Don’t cry (we’ve all been there)
Really. We’ve all been there. There must be only a small group with medium skintones who don’t encounter any problems with foundation matching, and I can imagine that they’ll moan about their rare undertones and how hard it is to find a good match. Both Astrid and I discovered that we both think that both our skintones are underrepresented in most companies’ offerings – we’re both at the ends of the spectrum with NC15 and NC42 respectively and we both have appalling stories to tell about how it’s impossible to find a good match for our skintones in the range of company xyz.
Third stage: Where am I?
There I was, having finally gotten it right – I had a fairly good idea where my skin was in the colour spectrum, what my undertone was, and had found some foundations I liked. And along came magazine x and website z and told me that they had the best red lipstick for every skintone and the most flattering blush for every skin colour – and they had three pictures to accompany their articles. The first one showed a blue-eyed, fair-skinned blonde, the second one a brown-eyed, tanned brunette and the third one showed a dark-eyed, dark-haired WOC. And that had me downright confused. I look like neither of these models. Where can I look for inspiration? Where are the articles that feature me and my skintone?
Representation on the ‘net, or when gets simplification overly simplified?
Skintones are confusing. Not two skintones will be completely and exactly the same, but yet we strive to bring some order into the chaos because we, the twindly team, want you to find your skintone represented on twindly.
Our mission behind twindly is to embrace diversity. We believe beauty is in every skin tone and colour. We’re against discrimination because of the colour of your skin, we’re against any cultural bias and we’re definitely for embracing your own colour.
While we want to find a great solution to depict skintone via twindly, we very soon discovered that that wouldn’t be easy. There are several ways to classify your skintone. From the oversimplified magazine approach ‘light, medium or dark’, to the humanae project by Angelica Dass that matches every skintone to a pantone color (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Humanae/353812644698477).
Cool, right? But also so very, very confusing… Some sites classify skintones as light, medium-light, medium, medium-dark, dark with cool, neutral, and warm undertones to diversify skintones further. Would you’d be able to find your skintone in there? We’re quite determined to go with an even more diverse approach, but we’d love to hear from you and hear your thoughts!
Stay tuned!
