Blush brush

A blush brush is a smaller, denser cousin of the powder brush: a soft, rounded head about three centimetres across, sized to the apple of the cheek, on a long handle. Its size is its purpose. It picks up enough colour for one cheek at a time, sets it down where a natural flush would sit, and its rounded edge fades the colour out so that it has no border.

Its neighbours divide the cheek between them. The angled blush brush, cut on a slant, lays colour along the cheekbone and lifts it towards the temple; the powder brush is too large and spreads blush across the face; a duo-fibre stippler dots on liquids; a fingertip warms and presses in cream. The round brush is the one for the apple, and it is forgiving with a strongly pigmented powder.

Blush brushes are still made in both hair and synthetic fibre. Hair, whose scaled surface grips powder, lets colour go evenly; Hakuhodo, in Kumano, makes its round blush brush of blue squirrel and goat, and Crown Brush sells a pointed, rounded one of what it calls a natural sable blend. Synthetic fibre does not soak up cream or liquid, and it washes clean, which makes it the choice for anyone who wears cream blush as often as powder.

Density decides strength. A loose, fluffy head deposits little and turns a pigmented powder into a sheer wash; a denser one carries more and is the better choice for cream, which needs pressing into the skin rather than dusting on. Shape decides placement: a round dome puts colour on the apple; an oval or tapered head, like By Terry’s or Saie’s, also reaches up along the cheekbone. Size the head to your face, too: one much wider than the apple spreads colour beyond it, and a small one, like Westman Atelier’s, is for a small area or a very strong cream.

Swirl the brush lightly over the pan, tap the handle against the back of your hand to shake off the excess, and start where the colour should be strongest. Smile, to find the apple, and press the brush onto it, then blend back towards the ear and a little up along the cheekbone in small circles, keeping clear of the side of the nose. Build a second layer rather than loading more at once: a round brush forgives, but it cannot take colour off. Hold it near the end of the handle for a light, diffused wash, and nearer the ferrule when you want to place colour exactly.

For cream blush, use a denser brush and tap rather than sweep, or dab the colour on with a fingertip and blend its edges with the brush. Over powder foundation keep to powder blush; over liquid or cream, a cream blush goes on first and a powder of a similar shade can set it. Wash the brush weekly, and after every use with cream, so that old colour does not muddy the new.

Most blush that looks wrong is too strong, too low or too close to the nose. If there is too much, go over it with a clean brush or a little translucent powder rather than wiping it, which leaves a stain. If it sits low, it drags the face down: keep the colour on and above the apple. If it has an edge, the brush was loaded unevenly; turn it as you pick up colour, so that the whole dome carries some. And a brush caked with old powder lays colour down in patches: if blush goes on unevenly, wash the brush before blaming the blush.

For most of its history blush went on without a brush made for it. In the nineteenth century, depending on its form and the wearer’s preference, rouge was put on with the fingers, a camel’s-hair brush, a hare’s foot or a powder puff, or straight from paper and fabric soaked in colour.^[1] One actor’s kit shows the same tools: the list of materials Cavendish Morton published in 1909 includes a powder puff, a box of dry rouge and a hare’s foot, and no brush.^[2] In 1915 Richard Hudnut advised rubbing dry rouge on with a rouge cloth or a bit of soft flannel.^[1]

The compact kept the puff. Pressed rouge sat in a metal pan whose floor was often ridged so that the cake would not lift when it was wiped with a puff, and in 1942 Dermetics sold an Automatic Rouge in which the powder sifted through a red velvet puff as it was rubbed across the cheek.^[1] The powders of the 1960s changed the tool. Very fine powders made possible new powdered make-up, eyeshadows, blushers and blending powders, and these were applied with a brush or a sponge.^[3] Mary Quant, who launched her cosmetics in 1966, claimed to have experimented with artists’ materials, paint brushes among them.^[4]

The round blush brush is the powder brush cut down to the size of a cheek, and it keeps something of the tools before it: a soft, loose head that places colour and fades its edge in the same movement.