Cream highlighter stick

A cream highlighter stick is the simplest highlighter to use: a solid balm or cream, carrying fine pearl pigment, drawn straight onto the face and patted in. The base is a blend of waxes, oils and emollients firm enough to stand up in a twist-up case and soft enough to melt at skin temperature, and that is what gives it its finish. Where a powder highlighter lays reflective particles on the surface, a balm sets them in a thin, clear film, and the effect is of skin that is damp, or lit from one side, rather than dusted with shimmer.

It is easy to confuse with its neighbours. A multi-use stick is sheer colour for the cheeks, lids and lips; a blush stick is colour for the cheeks; a contour stick is shadow. A highlighter stick adds light, not colour, and some are nearly transparent. Against a liquid highlighter it is more precise and less messy; against a powder it is kinder to dry skin and fine lines, because there is no powder to settle into them. What it gives up is staying power on oily skin, where a balm can slide by midday.

Glide the stick once along the top of the cheekbone, from below the outer corner of the eye towards the temple, then tap along the edge with a fingertip until the line softens into skin; the warmth of the finger helps a balm melt in. A short stroke down the bridge of the nose, a dab on the cupid’s bow and a touch under the arch of the brow complete the usual pattern, and the same stick can go on the collarbones and shoulders.

Order matters more with a cream than with anything else. Put it on after foundation and concealer, which it would otherwise lift, and before powder. If you set your face, press the powder around the highlight rather than over it, or the shine goes flat; for more intensity, dust a powder highlighter of a similar shade on top. On bare skin a stick can be the only thing worn: over moisturiser it reads as health rather than makeup. And with no powder to break and nothing to spill, it is the easiest highlighter to carry for touching up during the day.

Sticks divide by how far they set. A balm stays emollient and glassy all day, the closest thing to a wet look, and suits dry and mature skin; a cream-to-powder stick dries down to a satin sheen and holds better on combination and oily skin. Some are nearly clear and give only gloss; others carry enough pearl or tint to read as champagne, gold or bronze. Choose the shade as you would a powder: pearl and champagne on fair skin, gold and peach in the middle range, bronze and deep gold on dark skin. A clear balm suits every skin tone, because it adds shine without colour.

Test a stick the way you would wear it: one stripe on the cheekbone, blended out and checked by a window. Look for two things. The first is grit. A good balm melts without leaving specks, and glitter that sits on top of the film means the pearl is coarse. The second is the edge: a stick that drags, or leaves a stripe that will not soften, is too firm for that skin. Warming it for a moment against the back of the hand helps, and a slightly softer formula helps more.

A stick touches the face directly, so it picks up foundation, sunscreen and the skin’s own oil. Wipe the tip with a tissue after use, keep it to yourself, and never try one straight from a shop tester. Heat softens a balm, so keep it out of hot cars and off sunny windowsills; if the surface has been dragged through foundation, slice away a thin layer with a clean blade.

The highlight drawn from a stick belongs to the stage. By the 1840s most Western theatres were lit by gas, whose brighter light washed the colour out of the old powder make-up. Ludwig Leichner, an opera singer with an interest in chemistry, set up a make-up business in Berlin in 1873, and his greasepaint sticks came in two sizes: thick ones for the base, and thinner ones, called liners, for shadowing, highlighting, age lines and brows.^[1] A highlight, for an actor, meant a lighter colour placed where the face should come forward, not a sheen.

By the late 1960s, with high cheekbones in favour, the highlight had begun to shimmer. James Bennett’s Cosmetics and Skin records a Revlon Face Gleamer of 1967, a stick blusher in Blush, Peach and Tawny, from a time when highlighting was “more concerned with accentuating the cheek bones than mimicking cheeks untouched by sun”.^[2] The same year the London house Gala added a Face Shaping series of light and dark cream shapers, with a Velvet Highlighter described as “a stiff pearly white cream in a pot”.^[3] The highlighter stick sold today brings the two together: the actor’s liner, drawn straight onto the bone, and the pearly cream of the gleamers.