Cream blush

Cream blush is colour carried in something soft. In a balm the base is oils and waxes with no water in it; in a true cream it is an emulsion of oil and water, a moisturiser with pigment milled in.^[1] Either way it is pressed onto the skin rather than dusted over it, and warms into the surface, so the colour looks as if it belongs there. A good one moves with the face, does not catch on dry patches as powder can, and needs no brush at all.

Its neighbours are close. A blush stick is the same idea moulded into a twist-up tube; a liquid blush is thinner and more heavily pigmented; a cheek and lip tint is a stain that sets, where a cream stays soft. Many cream blushes are sold for the lips as well as the cheeks, which is an old habit: one pot, one colour, two places. Check that yours is sold for both before putting it on the mouth.

The texture decides the finish and how long it lasts. A balm glides, stays dewy and keeps well, but on oily skin it can slide by the afternoon. A cream in the emulsion sense feels lighter and sinks in further, and it is the kind most likely to dry out if the lid is left off. A cream-to-powder blush, sold as putty, mousse or bouncy blush, goes on soft and sets to a velvety, near-matte surface that holds up better on oily skin.

As a starting point, drier and older skin tends to look best in balms and creams, which do not catch on flakes or fine lines, and oilier skin in cream-to-powder formulas. Choose the shade as for any blush, depth first and undertone second. Because cream is pressed on rather than swept, it is easy to put down too much at once, so start with less than you think you need.

Cream goes on after foundation and before any powder. Put over a powdered face, it drags and lifts the base with it, a common cause of a patchy cheek. Warm a little on a fingertip, press it onto the apple of the cheek and pat outwards: tapping rather than rubbing is what keeps the foundation underneath intact. Blend the edge only as far as the look wants. A soft circle on the apple is as legitimate as a diffused wash along the bone.

A stippling brush gives a more even, airbrushed result, and a damp teardrop sponge presses the colour in and lifts any excess at the same time. To make it last, press a little translucent powder over it, or a powder blush of a similar shade for more colour. On the lips, tap a little onto the centre of the mouth and press the lips together.

A pot opened with the fingers every morning needs more care than a compact of powder. Wash your hands first, or lift the product out with a clean spatula, and close the lid firmly: a cream that contains water can dry out and, like any emulsion, spoil.^[2] Anhydrous balms keep better, though their surface can sweat or wrinkle as they age.^[2] The open-jar symbol on the pack gives the months the maker expects it to last once opened. A changed smell, a beaded or separated surface, or a crust at the edge means it is time for a new one.

The nearest ancestor of cream blush is the pomade rouge of the nineteenth century. Rouge bound with fat and wax was sold as rouge en pommade, and rouge of every kind could be bought in a small pot, in a box or on a saucer.^[3] The fatty kinds were mostly for the mouth: Richard Hudnut’s beauty booklet of 1915 advised that fatty rouges were usually confined to the lips, and the dry and liquid kinds kept for the skin.^[3]

The trade later separated two things that looked alike in the pot. A paste rouge was anhydrous, mineral oil and wax with the colour milled in, and kept well; a cream rouge was an emulsion made on a cold-cream or vanishing-cream base, which could dry out or spoil and needed a tight lid and a preservative. Advertisements rarely told them apart, and both went on before powder.^[3] Dorothy Gray was selling a Cream Rouge by 1930, and in 1932 a published method showed women how to put cream rouge on their lips in three dots.^[3]

The pot also went into uniform. When the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was formed in 1942, Elizabeth Arden’s Vibrant Red became Montezuma Red, the standard-issue lipstick, and a matching cream rouge completed the kit.^[4] After the war Coty’s Finger Blend make-up of 1950 included Rouge-Tint, a cream blush; Yardley’s Pot o’Gloss of 1972 went back to the older habit of one colour for cheeks and mouth; and by 1978 Maybelline was selling a Creme Blush.^[3] The cream sold today for cheeks and lips alike is not a modern convenience. It is the nineteenth-century rouge pot, made without the mineral reds that once went into it.