Blush stick

A blush stick is cream blush firm enough to stand up on its own. The formula is built like a lipstick’s, oils and colour held in a structure of waxes, soft enough to melt at the touch of warm skin and firm enough not to snap in the case. Some stay balmy and dewy; others are cream-to-powder and set to a soft matte. A handbook of cosmetic manufacture summed the form up in 1975: similar to lipstick, stable and easy to apply, but in need of tight control in the making.^[1]

Against a pot of cream it has two advantages: no fingers go into the product, and it can be carried in a pocket and used without a mirror. Against it: a stick lays colour down in a line rather than a dab, so it is easy to put on too much, and a firm stick dragged across set foundation lifts the base with it. Many are sold for the lips as well. Sticks sold for the eyelids too belong to a neighbouring kind, the multi-use stick.

Sticks divide by how much they give. A balm stick is soft, glides and leaves a dewy sheen; it suits dry skin and bare skin, and it can slide on oily skin by the afternoon. A cream-to-powder stick is firmer, goes on creamy and sets to a velvety finish that lasts longer in heat. Between them sit the satin creams most ranges sell.

Two newer kinds sit at the edges. Gel-cream sticks are lighter and dewier than a balm and look best on bare or lightly made-up skin. Sticks sold as pH-reactive or colour-adaptive promise a shade that shifts to suit the wearer, which is an old promise: in 1924 Princess Pat was selling a rouge that looked orange in the compact and turned red on the cheek.^[2]

Look at the tip, too. A rounded dome is for dabbing dots; an angled or triangular one is for drawing a short line along the cheekbone; a broad, flat stick covers more of the cheek at once and needs a lighter hand. Some sticks carry a brush or sponge at the other end, which saves carrying a tool. Choose the shade as for any blush, depth first and undertone second, and if the stick is sold for the lips, try it there before deciding.

Apply it after foundation and before powder. Dab two or three dots on the apple of the cheek, or a short line along the top of the cheekbone, then tap them together with a fingertip, a damp teardrop sponge or a stippling brush. Tapping rather than rubbing keeps the base intact. Start with less than you want: a second pass is easy, and taking colour away is not.

If the face is already powdered, do not drag the stick across it. Warm the tip on the back of the hand and pick the colour up from there with a finger or brush. To make it last, press a light layer of powder blush over the top.

A stick touches the face directly, so it picks up whatever is already there: foundation, sunscreen, the skin’s own oil. Wipe the tip with a tissue after each use, because the surface that touched the skin is the surface that goes back under the cap. If the top turns grey or streaky, shave a thin layer off with a clean spatula rather than working through it. And keep the cap on: an open stick in a warm bag softens and collects dust.

Sticks sold for the lips as well as the cheeks raise a question of order. Use the stick on the cheeks first and the mouth last, so that nothing from the lips goes back onto the face, or keep one stick for each. Heat is the other risk. A cream stick left in a car or on a sunny windowsill softens, can sweat oil and may crack as it cools, so store it as you would a lipstick, and throw it away if it starts to smell of old oil.

Sticks of make-up are older than the blush stick. In 1873 Ludwig Leichner began manufacturing greasepaint, which suited the brighter gas lighting of the theatre better than powder did, and French houses including Dorin and Bourjois answered with greasepaint of their own; a Bourjois catalogue of 1898 lists bâtons pour le grime, sticks of stage make-up.^[3] Stick rouge for the cheeks existed before the Second World War: Revlon introduced a Cheek Stick in 1940, its colours harmonised with the brand’s nail enamel and lipstick.^[4]

The stick mattered more after the war. The newer, more opaque foundations of the 1940s and 1950s did not suit many older kinds of rouge, and their use declined. Cosmetic chemists answered by changing the base, and stick rouges were probably the most important of the new forms. They were generally marketed as blushers, though they were not necessarily red, and they were wider than the pre-war sticks and used to shape the face rather than to make the cheeks look rosy.^[4] Revlon’s Face Gleamer stick blusher of 1967, in Blush, Peach and Tawny, was more concerned with the cheekbones than with the cheeks.^[4]

So the stick gave the category its modern name. The post-war sticks were sold as blushers, and the word outlived the fashion for shading the face. The sticks sold now have gone back to the older purpose, a flush in the middle of the cheek, and many are sold for the mouth as well, as rouge so often was.^[4]