My 600-hour adventure in esthetics school. Learn more about the project and catch up with Week 1.
Me. Airbrushed.
Today we pile into Miss Jenny’s SUV and drive over to the fancy mall for a demonstration of the AIRbrush Makeup System by Temptu at Sephora. Miss Jenny has been planning the trip for days, making at least nine phone calls to confirm that everything is set. We’ve been told to arrive no later than 4 PM because the Temptu demos finish at 5 — but arrive to a nearly empty store and two brand reps overjoyed to have some prospective customers: Gus, wearing knee-high Doc Martens and Sam, who is dressed vaguely like an alien extra from Star Trek.
I had it all tangled up with those mall kiosks that make t-shirts with your name inside a heart or next to a palm tree, but apparently, airbrush makeup has been around since MGM sprayed hundreds of Ben-Hur extras. The new, consumer-friendly version is not cheap ($225 for the machine, plus $30-$55 for the “pods” of highlighter, blush, and foundation), but I guess when you consider all that silicone, silica, iron oxide and water you’re getting (plus the same parabens, thickeners, preservatives, dyes and fragrance that appear in any of your old-school, low-tech cosmetics), it’s a bargain?
I try to calculate how long a single pod of blush ($35) is supposed to last while to my right, Sam tells Meg why Temptu will be so brilliant for her dry skin, and on my left, Gus tells Stephanie why Temptu will be so indispensable for her oily skin.
When it’s my turn, Gus tells me that Temptu is especially well designed to combat redness and breakouts (thanks for noticing) and aims his pod gun at a spot on my chin. “You just have to be patient,” he says. “It takes awhile to cover everything perfectly and you have to practice.”
She is being very patient.
That’s probably why Temptu holds workshops for professional makeup artists to learn their equipment — all you have to do to attend is buy $150 worth of product, after which, I’d guess I would be a convert, too.
Miss Jenny, who has been humming with excitement about this trip all week, seems disconcerted as we examine the results. “I’m not sure I like wearing this much on my face,” she admits. “We look awfully matte.”
We console ourselves by pocketing as many free lotion samples as we can find, then take our newly poreless faces off to P.F. Chang’s for lettuce wraps before driving home.
[Photo Credits: Gus's fine airbrushing work and my scanning, plus this guy and this one.]
7 Comments
November 13, 2009 at 6:49 PM
Is this just to apply foundation or do they use this to do things like blush and eye shadow too?
November 17, 2009 at 3:58 AM
You can do foundation, blush, and highlighter (which is like bronzer) with this Temptu model. Apparently the pro line also offers eye shadow and that’s in the works for consumers — but they wanted to keep it simple at first so you could figure it out.
But yes, sometime in the next few years, you could be the proud owner of an entirely airbrushed face.
December 22, 2009 at 7:00 AM
[...] Miss Jenny tells me that she tries to avoid products that contain parabens. We’re on another Sephora field trip, and I’m browsing facial cleansers. “You’re better off without them,” she [...]
December 28, 2009 at 5:36 PM
[...] it’s not all trips to the mall and fancy eyelashes, [...]
May 18, 2010 at 7:12 AM
[...] Jump to Comments It’s been ages since Beauty U took us on a good, old-fashioned field trip, so I was more excited than you might think to give up my Sunday and trek into New York City for [...]
May 25, 2010 at 8:12 AM
[...] But there is hope because the average beauty consumer may be flocking to online beauty gurus and those brand reps who hang out at Sephora airbrushes at the ready, but “she believed us first,” says Reuben Carranza, CEO of [...]
June 17, 2010 at 11:05 AM
[...] Stephanie brings in her airbrush gun so we can practice spray tanning each other. Which I bring up because it is also about skin and [...]