£450 to get your makeup done for the afterlife

Relatively new makeup brand Illamasqua have established a reputation for being outrageous, but I think they might have overdone it this time.

They’ve just announced a service in conjunction with a funeral directorship to get one of their makeup artists to do-up your corpse for the eye-popping sum of £450. They’re calling it ‘The final act of self-expression’, and I can see that argument, but if you didn’t spend most of the days of your life with £500-odd of makeup on your face, why would you want to be buried with it? And god only knows why you’d do it if you were being cremated. So your ashes come out rainbow-coloured with melted eyeliner and lipstick…?

Open-casket funerals are apparently gaining popularity in this country, so I imagine they’ll get the odd taker or two (and of course a whole lot of press and blog attention), but aligning themselves with death still seems a bit of an odd move. Especially when some of their makeup looks would scare the bejeezus out of anyone peering into the coffin:

Hands up: who wants to be remembered like this?!

Perhaps that’s the idea. Illamasqua’s Creative Director, Alex Box, has more than a touch of the spooky about her:

Note: not a Cruella DeVil costume. She always looks like this.

Even if you wanted to use this service, would you trust your family to pick out the right scary makeup look to take you into the beyond? I’ve found that people fond of the Illamasqua brand of self-expression are often doing it in spite of their families, and to their utter confusion. You might feel like a an emo she-devil or whatever, but your mum’s thinking some Clinique neutrals and a bit of lip gloss would be much nicer. So unless you’re leaving precise instructions in your will, you’re probably not going to get your 450 quid’s worth.

And speaking of that price – yowzers. A professional makeup artist for your wedding day is about £100 – why is this so much more? I’m guessing it might be danger money for the artist having to work with a corpse, and partly because they’d need to chuck away all the brushes and products used on the deadie afterwards. Or you’d hope so, anyway. Wouldn’t like to think the blusher brush on my cheek at the Illamasqua counter was last used on someone past their sell-by date.

Make Up For Ever: Unretouched my bum

So earlier today I posted about Make Up For Ever’s apparently unretouched advert. But since then I’ve spotted another version of the ad floating around, in which the model appears to be wearing different makeup, but in an otherwise-identical photo.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two images, both found on the Huffington Post – click for bigger (image one, image two):

I’d like to see an explanation of this discrepancy that doesn’t involve retouching. It’s possible that the difference in make-up colours could be accounted for by colour-correction – but what about the image on the camera screen? On the left-hand photo, no image on the screen. On the right, a faint image of the girl. Colour correction or not, that image has definitely been retouched in.

I guess once again we’ve all been sucked in by a load of hot air. Unretouched? Like hell it is.

‘The first unretouched make up ad’

Well, it’s about time. A makeup company’s finally capitalised on the world’s disdain for overly-Photoshopped adverts, and made it a point of difference that they don’t need to retouch theirs. Here’s the ad:

Frankly, this should have happened about three years ago when the backlash began, but it’s still a positive step. I’d like to see an ad like this for mascara, with a line like ‘Not shot with lash inserts. Not enhanced in post production’, but it’s probably not possible because all mascaras look rubbish in real-life closeups. Even the really good ones.

Anyway, well done to Make Up For Ever’s marketing team for taking what must have seemed like a risky step. More of this, please.

EDIT: It’s just been pointed out to me that she’s holding the camera upside-down. Well played!