Fresh Powder Make-Up

Loose powder has its benefits—and admirers. Over the years, loose powders have increased about 70% in popularity, and with good reason. There is nothing like loose powder foundation for sheer to medium, beautiful coverage that allows the beauty of your complexion to come through.

Clinique’s Superbalanced Powder Makeup with SPF 15 just came out this month and offers genuine breakthroughs in the formula of the powder and the application. First the formula— it is blessed with an encapsulated complex of moisturizing and protecting ingredients including Phytosqualane and Murumuru Butter and Vitamin C and E as well as sunscreen are dispensed every time to use the shaver to release the lose powder. When you turn the inside edge of the beautiful compact, the pressed powder inside is shaved to release just the amount of loose powder you need for an application and the portable anti-bacterial brush tucks inside the compact

This is an impressive product in a portable, no-spill container that you can take with you. ($32.50)

www.clinique.com

No Foundation Foundation

This ingenious product, from Perricone MD Cosmeceuticals, was designed for some of the world’s most famous faces and now you can have it. Amazingly, there is only one universal shade for all ages and skin types and gives a natural, translucent coverage with a flawless finish.

It glides on the skin like it is on rollers--so smooth and clings to your face and softens imperfections. The No Foundation Foundation has these Perricone staples:

Alpha lipoic acid..smoothes skin texture minimizezes lines

Vitamin C Ester—helps even out skin tone and brightens skin appearance

DMAE firming and lifting

Specially treated pigments—blended with light-diffusing mica to instantly soften the look of lines, wrinkles and pores.

And it protects with a natural SPF 30.

A welcome addition.

Purely Alima

Alima Pure, a quiet company based in Portland Oregon is making inroads in the mineral cosmetics realm. Alima Pure offers more than truly lovely 250 products with 60 foundation shades, making it easy to find a perfect match. Their items are available online and at select boutiques and spas nationwide.

Alima Pure is offering Holiday Collections that feel as good on the skin as they make the skin look.

Act 1: Four coordinated shadows for smoky eyes:
Lana (a shimmer of pink), Ingrid (a pearly taupe), Ava (sterling silver) , Bette (a deep, velvety blue) [if you have to ask who those first names belong to, never mind.]

Act. II: Light minerals to create classic contoured cheekbones:
Harlow ( soft pearled highlighter), Garbo ( matte neutral brown for depth), Leigh (a neutral rose, almost matte but with a hint of copper shimmer)

Each Holiday Gift Collection is $25 (a $36. value), and $2 from the sale of each will be donated to the Global Fund for Women

www.alimapure.com

Definity Possibilities

Olay has been in the business of skincare long enough to know what they are doing. Born more than fifty years ago, as Oil of Olay, the skincare company has evolved into one of the best performing anti-aging skin care lines.

Color Recapture, by Olay Definity, one of several categories of skincare that Olay offers, at first seemed like it would be like many often marketed, oft tried combinations of moisturizer and coverage. Too many times products that make this dual promise turn out to be, somewhat duplicitous, if unintentionally. Something just misses—either the color is streaky or the moisturizer is either too greasy or not there. Olay’s Definity Color Recapture, however, really does what it says it will do. And isn’t that what any of us wants from any product?

The slim, clear container is easy on the eye and shows off the ribbons of coverage amid the moisturizer. Just the right amount of the mixture comes out of the pump if you are careful not to press too hard--a little goes a long way. The solution goes on very smoothly and feels like satin against the skin. And the result was a surprising excellent. The color blends in perfectly with the anti-aging moisturizer and provides the right amount of coverage for most days. Imperfections and discolorations are diffused by the sheer illuminating color and the skin has a more supple feel. And even while it is making your complexion more luminous, Color Recapture is working as an anti-aging skin care elixir.

Available in three shades: Fair to Light; Light to Medium; Medium to Deep