Cream bronzer

Cream bronzer is the warm colour of powder bronzer carried in waxes, oils and emollients instead of a pressed cake. It comes in a pot or a compact, as a soft balm or as a twist-up stick, and it is pressed and buffed into the skin rather than swept across it. Because there is no powder in its texture, it moves with the face, shows less on dry or textured skin and gives a finish that looks like skin with some sun on it, anything from dewy to a soft matte.

Two neighbours are easily confused with it. A cream contour stick looks much the same in the hand, but it is cool and greyish, made to paint a shadow; a cream bronzer is warm and paints the colour of a tan. Many houses sell both, sometimes under similar names, so read the shade descriptions rather than the packaging. Bronzing drops, the third relation, are thinner still: a liquid mixed into moisturiser for an all-over wash, where a cream is placed and blended where the colour is wanted.

The format decides how the bronzer behaves. A balm or soft cream is the sheerest and the most forgiving: it stays slightly damp, gives a dewy finish and suits dry or mature skin, but it moves more in heat and needs setting on oily skin. A cream-to-powder formula goes on as a cream and sets to a soft matte within a minute or two, which makes it the longer-wearing choice for combination and oily skin. A stick is a cream in a twist-up case, easy to carry and to draw straight onto the face, and its texture can be either of the other two.

Choose the shade as you would a powder: one or two shades deeper than your skin, with an undertone that matches it. On fair skin a soft golden tan reads as sun and anything orange reads as makeup; on deep skin the cream needs real depth, a rich red-brown or copper, because a pale cream turns chalky or grey. Creams often look stronger in the pan than on the face, and many deepen a little as they settle, so judge a swatch on the jaw after a minute rather than at once.

Some creams carry shimmer or pearl and some are sold as shimmer-free. The shimmer-free ones are the easier to wear all over and the kinder to texture; a pearly cream is best kept to the tops of the cheekbones, where it does the work of a bronzer and a highlighter at once.

Cream goes on before powder. Apply it over foundation or straight onto moisturised skin, then set lightly, if at all; cream pressed over powder drags and goes patchy. Dab a little on the tops of the cheekbones, the temples and the jaw, where the sun would land, and blend at once with a dense brush, a damp sponge or the fingertips, pressing and buffing rather than wiping. Fingers warm the cream and give the most skin-like result; a sponge gives the sheerest.

Work in small amounts, because cream is easier to build than to take away and a heavy first dab is the usual cause of a stripe. If an edge will not soften, go over it with the sponge you used for foundation, which carries just enough base to blur it. For a bronze that lasts a long day, press a powder bronzer of a similar shade over the cream once it has set: the cream gives the depth, the powder keeps it in place.

Look after the format you choose. A stick collects foundation and oil from the face every time it is used, so give it a wipe afterwards and do not share it. A pot is better dipped into with a brush than with a finger, and should be closed tightly, because creams dry out and gather dust. If a cream starts to smell different or separate, it is time to replace it.

A tan in cream form began as much on the stage and the body as on the face. In 1949 the theatrical make-up house Leichner, which went on making make-up for stage, film and television after the war, introduced Island Tan, a cream make-up in large tubes. It was released as a general suntan cream, advertised as producing “a glorious tan”, and Leichner also recommended it for the stage, the ballet and television, in shades called Blonde, Brunette and Summertan.^[1] A cream that could stand in for a tan under studio lights could stand in for one on a summer evening too.

Nearly twenty years later the American house Frances Denney sold Bare Allusion Leg & Body Make-up, a make-up that acted as a fake tan, in shades called Golden, Sun, Tan and Bronze. Its advertising of 1967 promised that it smoothed on “like creamy satin” and that, though waterproof, it rinsed “away with a gentle soaping”.^[2] That last promise is still the whole case for cream bronzer: a colour that passes for sun for a day and goes down the drain at night. The balms and sticks here are its descendants, smaller, sheerer and made for the face; the fashion that made them saleable, and the argument over who started it, belong to the story of powder bronzer.