The No-Makeup Makeup Kit

Five products pretending to be none.

Five steps Five products Weekday mornings 4 min

Primer is a zone product, not a face product, and treating it as a face product is why it so often makes things worse. Forehead, sides of the nose, the triangle above the lip. Then wait a full minute — a primer works by setting into a film, and anything applied into the tacky middle stage will grab and streak.

Product Face primer

The sponge exists to take product off, not put it on, which is a strange thing to buy a tool for and exactly why it works. Squeeze it out until it stops dripping — dry, it drinks a third of what you give it. Base goes on with fingers in three places, then gets pressed. Sweeping pushes it to the jaw, and the jaw is the tell.

Product Makeup sponge

Clear gel only. Up through the head, flat along the tail, then stop. A drawn brow has to be matched by everything else on the face, and there is nothing else on this face to match it to. Set the hairs before any powder touches the skin.

Product Clear brow gel

One product, two jobs, one warning. Lips generously, lid sparingly and only in the centre. On a smooth lid it gives an unbothered wet look no cream shadow manages without looking like cream shadow. On a lid with any fold, it migrates in ninety minutes. Get a balm with SPF — the lip has almost no barrier of its own.

Product Lip balm

Between the brows, the side of each nostril, the centre of the chin. Those are the three places a face moves and therefore the three places a base breaks. Press with the puff and roll it. Powder across the cheek is the exact moment this stops reading as skin.

Product Setting powder