Hello my readers! We start today’s post talking about a decade that left no one indifferent, and is that, whether or not you have lived the sixties, I am sure you know their music, their aesthetics, and their crazy makeup. Both Hollywood and retro posters have flooded our imagination with colourful makeup, rounded and flashy dresses.
The 1960s had a modern revolution. The baby boomers reached youth and wanted to create a more modern, liberal, and transgressive society than the one their predecessors had left years before.
To understand this well, we must first put a historical framework:
And that is that the USA and Russia were in the midst of the “Cold War”, a tense situation of continuous danger, which made adults focus on politics. This cold war was a confrontation not only political, but also economic, social, military, and informational, which began after the end of the Second World War.
Young people rejected the current society focusing on the idea of “peace and love”, looking for fun or social change, participating actively to a greater or lesser extent. All this resulted in the hippie movement, slogans such as the well-known “flower power” and psychedelia (in addition to the design of hallucinogenic drugs, LSD, and increased consumption of weed).
Knowing this, let us start analysing the makeup characteristics and trends present in the real woman of the time:
Skin:
THE beauty ideal of the time in terms of skin, was a very natural finish, with light tones and no search for tanning. In addition, blush was applied in the centre of the cheek, in a rounded way and without tearing towards the temple as today, since they did not want to achieve an aggressive look, but quite the opposite. The “doll” finish triumphed, sweet and girlish with pink and pastel colours.
Mouth:
In the same way, lips were made up in a soft way, with hardly any lip liner. Pink tones were the most in demand at the time, and volume was sought with glossy and moisturizing formulas.
Eyes:
The eyes were the big stars of the era. They were very pronounced and with different trends, being the twiggy look the most acclaimed.
Twiggy
The model Twiggy was an icon at the time. She wore colourful, geometric, low-waisted suits and dresses, miniskirts and bell-cuts, which were also fashionable at the time, along with boots and ankle boots. She was 1.69m tall, weighed 40kilos and was 17 years old, she met all the beauty standards of the time, boyish look, slim and young.
Her makeup was as follows:
o She framed her eyes to make them look bigger and made up her eyelids with blush colours (more related to the quality of the pigmentation of the shadows than to her own choice) in shades such as yellow, sky blue, turquoise, or baby pink.
o The eye socket was marked with black pencil without reaching the ends in the form of a banana and also on the lower eyelid.
o The waterline was usually made up with black or white pencils.
o False eyelashes were a must in this look, while on the lower eyelid it was common to draw small eyelashes with eyeliner.
As a curious fact, in the very fashionable series Lady Gambit, we can find a wink to this look on the protagonist herself, which takes place between the 50s and 60s.
– On the other hand, advertising and marketing created an aggressive and functional vision in society. Plastic began to be used for everything, giving also a galactic and spatial idea that would reach the makeup at the end of the decade to start with the aesthetics of the seventies.
What do you think of the sixties? For me, Twiggy makeup is one of the most special and fun to recreate. What would you like us to talk about in the next posts
