Cream foundation

Cream foundation is pigment carried in a thick, emollient base — more oil and wax, and less water, than a liquid — packed into a jar or a compact. It does not pour; it moves only when it is warmed and worked, and that is its character. A little spreads a long way, the pigment load is high, and the film it leaves is dense enough to cover what a liquid only softens.

Its neighbours are close. A liquid is the same colour in a thinner, more adjustable vehicle. A stick foundation is a cream firmed with more wax so that it can be twisted up and drawn on. A cream-to-powder foundation is a cream made to dry to a matte, powdery surface. Tinted moisturisers and BB creams are lighter still, closer to skincare than to cover. Cream foundation sits at the heavy end of the family: the base for dry skin, for discolouration, and for faces that will be photographed under hard light.

What is sold as cream foundation now comes in three distinct forms, and the first decision is which one suits the skin. Emollient creams, often in a heavy glass jar, stay soft on the face and finish satin or dewy. They are kindest to dry and mature skin, which a matte base tends to emphasise, and least suited to skin that shines by midday.

Cream-to-powder compacts go on as a cream and set to a matte, powdery surface within a minute or two. They give much of a cream’s coverage with far less shine, which is why they have long been made for oilier and deeper skin tones, where a greasy finish reads as grey. Professional and corrective creams — the theatrical, film and camouflage lines — carry the most pigment of all. They are made to cover birthmarks, scars, tattoos and uneven tone, and to hold up under studio lights, and a small dab of one goes further than a large dab of anything else in the carousel.

Density makes shade matter more. A sheer liquid slightly off tone can pass; a full-coverage cream in the wrong colour shows as a mask at the jaw. Match it on the jawline in daylight, and go by undertone as well as depth. The Black Opal and Flori Roberts compacts in the carousel were made for deeper skin tones.

The mistake with cream foundation is using too much of it. Take a little from the jar with a clean spatula or the back of a brush, warm it on the back of the hand, and start at the centre of the face, where most people need the most coverage. A dense buffing brush, worked in small circles, blends it thinnest and gives the smoothest surface. A damp sponge, pressed rather than wiped, sheers it out and leaves the most skin-like finish. Fingers warm it quickest and suit the softer, oil-rich creams.

Build coverage only where it is needed: one thin layer everywhere, then a second, pressed on, over redness or marks. Cream sits best on moisturised skin and under cream products — blush, bronzer, highlighter — rather than over powder, which it lifts and streaks. Set only the places that crease or shine, the sides of the nose and under the eyes, with a light press of powder. Make-up artists who work from palettes mix two shades on the back of the hand to hit the one in between.

A jar is opened with fingers and brushes, so keep it clean: use a spatula, close the lid, and throw it away if the smell or texture changes. The open-jar symbol on the pack, with a number of months beside it, is the maker’s guide to how long it keeps once opened.

The word began literally. Early loose face powders did not cling well, and women smoothed a vanishing cream on first to hold them. A trade article of 1928 said the stearate creams were favoured because they are absorbed quickly and “so provide a foundation for the application of face powders”.^[1] Makers soon tinted them to match the powder or to hide small blemishes, and some claimed their “powder cream” could replace powder altogether: Dorothy Gray sold a Make-up Foundation Cream in 1934 in White, Natural and Rachel, and Max Factor recommended his own, in White, Flesh, Rachelle and Natural, applied very sparingly and blended well in.^[1]

The heavy, covering cream came from a different need. Lydia O’Leary, who had a port-wine stain across one side of her face, developed Covermark by 1928 and sold it from 1931. It began as a liquid applied with a brush and was soon replaced by a cream that covered better; by 1936 it came in eight shades, made, the historian James Bennett observes, with lighter skin tones in mind.^[2] Her patent, filed in 1930 and granted in 1932, describes a preparation meant to conceal birthmarks and blemishes while simulating skin in texture, flexibility and colour.^[3] The line of corrective creams continued: Flori Roberts, whose company made cosmetics for Black women from the 1960s, later founded Dermablend.^[4]

What survives is the division those two histories drew. The light cream became the everyday liquid; the dense one stayed with the people who need real cover — for skin that is marked, for the stage, and for the camera.