Winter makeup

The foundation has not changed. The surface underneath it has. Dehydrated skin has a rougher surface and a fine layer of loose dead cells, and foundation clings to those unevenly — which reads as patchy and powdery, particularly around the nose and on the chin.

The common response is to switch to a more hydrating foundation, which helps a little. The response that actually works is to fix the surface: gentle exfoliation once or twice a week through the winter, and a heavier moisturiser given three or four minutes to absorb before anything goes on top.

Three minutes sounds like a detail and is not. Foundation applied onto a moisturiser that has not absorbed slides, separates and pills, and that is the single most common winter complaint.

Central heating and gas heaters strip humidity out of indoor air. A heated Tbilisi flat in January can sit well below the humidity of the street outside, and most people spend most of the day inside it.

This is why winter makeup fails indoors rather than outdoors. Skin loses moisture into dry room air all day, and the base follows it — settling into lines by the afternoon and looking tight around the mouth and eyes.

Two things help more than any product: a hydrating mist that can be used over makeup, and drinking water indoors rather than only when you are thirsty. Neither is glamorous advice and both change the base at four in the afternoon.

Wind in December leaves the cheeks and the tip of the nose genuinely red, and it happens between the flat and the car. Makeup applied to a face that is about to go outside has to account for where the colour will be twenty minutes later.

Practically: go lighter on blush than the mirror suggests, and place it higher on the cheekbone rather than on the apple, where the wind will add its own. On days when the wind is severe, a green corrector on the nose before foundation is not excessive.

A good barrier cream or balm on the most exposed areas before makeup makes a visible difference by the evening, and it is the step almost nobody takes.

• Lighter blush, placed higher on the cheekbone
• Barrier balm on the nose and cheeks before the base
• Green corrector on severe-wind days
• Lip balm well before lipstick, not underneath it at the last moment

Skin that gets no sun from November to March is genuinely lighter — often by a full shade — and usually cooler in undertone. A foundation matched in August is visibly too dark and too warm by January, most obviously along the jaw.

This is not a reason to buy two foundations, though many people do. Mixing the summer shade with a lighter one, or simply using less of it, covers the gap for most skin.

Bronzer changes too. Warm summer bronzer on winter-pale skin reads as orange in the low, cold daylight Tbilisi gets in December. A cooler, more neutral shade is the adjustment, and it is worth making rather than abandoning bronzer altogether.

Lips have no oil glands, so they lose moisture faster than anything else on the face. In winter, matte liquid lipsticks — the most drying category there is — go from acceptable to genuinely uncomfortable and visibly cracked.

The winter approach is a satin or cream finish, with a lip balm applied a good ten minutes earlier and blotted, not applied underneath at the last moment where it will simply make the colour slide.

Exfoliating the lips gently once or twice a week matters more in winter than at any other time. Colour applied over flaking lips draws attention to exactly the thing it was meant to cover.