Makeup

Contouring With Blush Isn’t as Crazy as It Sounds

The result is ridiculously pretty.

October 27, 2020

I’ve spent nearly a decade trying to figure out how to contour. Thanks to the prevalence of “Instagram Face” and a snide comment from an ex about how round my face is, every time I apply makeup, I use a cocoa-colored powder to attempt to carve out hollow cheekbones I’ll never have. But each time I’m left with either no visible change, or a muddy stripe of product down each side of my face.

Months ago I had all but abandoned my makeup brush and was researching buccal fat removal—it’s a no for me—when I was reminded of blush contouring while listening to Blondie. Contour blush, also known as blush draping, is an old-school technique popularized by Cher’s makeup artist Way Bandy in the ’70s, although he called it “color glow” at the time. Essentially, it’s all about using blush as a way to sculpt and shape your face and enhance your unique structure. It spiked in popularity again a few years ago—largely thanks to the revival of fashion and makeuptrends, sparked by GLOW, and a resurgence of ’80s makeup backstage at fashion week—but it’s mostly since faded into the background.

Cher poses for a Fashion Session in a Bob Mackie Creation on April 9 1978

Debbie Harry blush contouring in the '80s.

I’ve actually been using a subtle version of this technique for years without even realizing it. Blush is my favorite product, but placed right on the apples of my cheeks, it makes my baby face look even rounder. (In fact, this basic “advice” to put blush on the dead-center of your cheeks doesn’t work for everyone!) So I started applying it higher on my cheekbones to add a flush of color and a little definition all in one swoop.

But since seeing more influencers and makeup artists doing blush contour on social media lately, I’ve been embracing it in full force. I love how it subtly shapes my face and looks so much more youthful than a flat contour. Plus, it’s the only way to make my blush visible when wearing a mask.

The easiest way to understand this technique is to look at photos from the disco era, so bust out your mom’s photo albums (or Pinterest). While the colors are a lot, the placement is just right. It helps to use an angled or tapered blush brush—I like BareMinerals’ version or the Chanel Powder Brush—and think about sweeping your blush where you usually apply highlighter, right on top of your cheekbones for a nice lifted look.

“If you’re going to drape your blush, rather than right on the apples of the cheeks, move your blush placement back a bit to the top of your cheekbones, dusting the orbital bone and then up to the temples,” says Kasey Spickard, a makeup artist in New York. “Start by building your product slowly. You don’t want to go full ’80s with the intensity of the blush.”

If you’re more of a minimalist, you can stop at your cheekbones, but I usually like to take it up around my eyes (again, think that C where we've been taught to put highlighter), and across the bridge of my nose like all the kids are doing on TikTok. No matter how much I apply, I always go over the edges with a clean beauty blender so there are no harsh lines where the color starts and stops.

Instagram content

One of my favorite things about this technique is how easily swapping the blush shade can change your whole face and vibe. For everyday, I like to use a nudey-rose color for a more natural sculpt—my favorite blush for this is Chanel’s Rose Bronze, since its warm tones and slight shimmer act as my highlighter, blush, and bronzer in one. For summer I like to switch to more of a juicy terra cotta shade, and if I look really dead or want to stay true to the ’80s vibe, a bright, cool pink is the way to go.

I prefer to use powder blushes for this technique since I find it easier to control, but Spickard recommends starting with a cream (he likes the Jouer Blush and Bloom duos). “I buff out the cream super faintly as my base with fingers or a dense buffer brush,” he says. “Then I go back over the top of those with a powder blush of my choice.”