hair and makeup seminar at the Haven

Went to this today at The Haven, a breast cancer charity centre. The
guest speaker was Jeffrey Swan, an American in London who has been
doing hair and makeup for the past twenty years. Again, his talk was
mainly aimed at women who don't have much of a grasp of makeup brands
and techniques but he did some really nice work with some of the wigs
and hairpieces people brought in, including mine! I've found this
company called Hip Hats who sell hairpieces (real human hair) attached
to hats, scarves, or with just a skull cap so you can add your own
"topper." I'm so happy with this that I own all three choices–– hair
attached to a scarf, hair with a skull cap and hair attached to a
baseball cap. I was surprised, as he didn't even trim it, he just
fluffed it a bit and said it looked great! Well, I still want it
layered a bit, as I feel like it's a bit long in front but it is a good
match for what my hair used to look like. There were twenty women
there and I think there probably wasn't time for him to really cut and
style it . That's okay, I can have my hairdresser do it...
He had a box of Makeup Forever cream colors (looked a lot like the Ben
Nye Severe exposure wheel but in squares in a plastic box) that he
dabbed and blended on cheeks and lips. He also spent time filling in
and extending eyebrows or creating some where there were none. he
advised to go for the scariest shade on the counter (meaning bright)
especially in lipgloss as this can add a "pop" or glow to faces that
are wan or grey from chemo. Very interesting ideas. He mentioned the
Stila lipglosses as being especially nice and false eyelashes from Shu.
His powder kit was from Mac and the cream colors were from Makeup
Forever (also had one of those long lip palettes from them as well..
looked like the vivid pink ones). Another product he really liked was
Benefit's Moonbeam for adding dewiness. So overall an interesting
seminar from someone who has been in the business for a long, long time!

They were very interested, writing everything down that he said...
though I was a bit worried when he twigged on to the fact that I was a
complete makeup fiend, he went on and on about how much more interested
American women were in their appearance and how English women can't be
bothered, etc.. which I actually don't think is the case. I think
English women are extremely interested in how they look but they don't
think it's polite to be OPEN about it or to appear too interested in
it. I don't think he made me many friends in that moment, but I hung
around afterwards to make my own recommendations and everyone seemed
quite relaxed and happy. it's a really shit thing to go through and
everyone's in the same boat so there's a built in comradery, if you
know what i mean!