Unfiltered Beauty

Alicia Keys started it, Demi Lovato tried it, Christina Aguilera rocked it and now weve done it too. This is what its like to be makeup-free for a whole month

- Georgie Bradley

Looking at my beauty cabinet (primers, highlighters, bronzers, brow palettes, concealers, blenders, a spectrum of brushes) you’d think I spend the better part of an hour laminating my face with war paint. Take a more granular look and you’ll see dust particles pirouetting around the products. They weren’t always neglected like this though.

It’s been a month since I decided to have a major makeunder. All that has meant is not wearing any makeup – not a morsel of cover-up, not a swipe of blush nor a flick of liner. Either you’re shrieking in horror at this (“you can’t pay me enough to do that,” said one friend) or you’re ‘pah’-ing nonchalantly (“give me a real challenge!” snorted another friend). Since the no-makeup makeup trend is already having a good run, this just seemed like a quick hop further to au naturel.

I am constantly endowed with products way past my pay grade (by the way thank you PRs, it’s all received with much glee, trust me) that also tend to be so above my level of beauty knowledge, I rely on YouTube tutorials for distillation purposes. But over the past few months, my use of product has dwindled – mostly out of laziness from years of diehard and failed attempts at fine-tuning the cat-eye technique. Can someone please help me not look like a bandit on Halloween? And it’s always been one of my three wishes for there to be a magic wand to make me makeup-ready before I shoot out the front door in the mornings.