Kabuki brush

A kabuki brush is short, dense and round: a tightly packed dome of short fibres on a handle so stubby that the whole brush sits in the palm. The density is what makes it useful. A loose powder brush sweeps a veil across the face; a kabuki is pressed and turned against the skin, so it works powder into place and gives fuller, more even coverage. That is why it became the usual partner of loose mineral foundation, and why it is also good for buffing bronzer, blush and creams.

Its nearest relatives share its density but not its shape. The flat-top buffing brush is cut straight across and usually has a long handle; the domed buffing brush puts a kabuki’s dense round head on a full-length handle, for more control around the nose and eyes. Retractable kabukis, whose heads slide down into a metal case, are the same brush made for a handbag.

Start with density. The more tightly packed the head, the more product it carries and the fuller the coverage; a slightly looser kabuki gives a sheerer, more forgiving finish with powder and suits bronzer and blush as well. Then the fibre. Goat hair grips and blends powder well; synthetic fibre, which is not porous, is the better choice if the brush will also buff cream or liquid foundation. Size follows use: a full-size dome covers the whole face in a minute, a mini one is for blush, the sides of the nose and touching up, and a body-sized one is for bronzer or shimmer on the shoulders and legs.

Then the handle. The classic kabuki is short so that you hold it close to the head and press; it travels well and works fast. The name has stretched, though. Houses now sell dense brushes on full-length handles as kabukis, and angled, pointed and body-sized versions too, while Hakuhodo in Japan sells its own squat brushes under another name altogether. If you want to press and buff, look for the density and the short handle rather than the word on the box.

For loose powder or mineral foundation, tip a little into the lid, swirl the brush in it so the powder works into the head, tap off the excess, and buff it over the face in small circles, starting where you need most coverage and moving outward. Build in thin layers: two light passes cover more naturally than one heavy one. With pressed powder, swirl once over the pan. For cream or liquid, dot it on the skin first and buff it in the same way, then wash the brush that day, because a dense head holds on to wet product.

With bronzer and blush, use a lighter hand. A dense brush picks up a great deal of colour at once, so touch the pan with the side of the dome, tap off twice as much as you think, and place the colour before you buff; buffing afterwards softens an edge, but it cannot take colour away.

Density also makes a kabuki slow to dry. Squeeze it out well after washing and leave it lying flat or head down, and let a retractable one dry completely before it goes back into its case.

The name comes from kabuki, the Japanese theatre, and the story usually told with it, that kabuki actors put on their white faces with just such a brush, is repeated far more confidently than the evidence supports. The Japan Arts Council’s own account of kabuki make-up describes the actor covering his face in a base colour and then drawing the kumadori lines with a brush; it names no squat powder brush.^[1] Hakuhodo, a brush maker in the Japanese town of Kumano, says the brush traditionally used for shironuri, the white face of kabuki and geisha, is the itabake, a thick, flattened brush,^[2] and it sells its own squat, dense brushes as kinoko, mushrooms, with “kabuki style” in brackets.^[3]

Japan’s documented part in the makeup brush lies in Kumano itself. Its villagers sold brushes bought in Nara from the late eighteenth century and learnt to make them in the nineteenth; they began making brushes for painting and for make-up around 1955, and in 1975 Kumano brushes were designated a traditional craft by Japan’s trade minister. The town now makes about 80 per cent of the brushes produced in Japan.^[4] Hakuhodo was founded there in 1974 to make brushes for painting ceramics and dolls, spent the early 1980s developing makeup brushes and, by its own account, began making brushes for MAC in 1995.^[5]

In the West the short, dense brush spread with loose mineral foundation. Loose powders had been falling out of use since the Second World War; very fine mineral powders revived them, applied, as the historian James Bennett notes, with a brush rather than a puff.^[6] Bare Escentuals, which signed an agreement with the shopping channel QVC in 1998 and first ran a long television infomercial in 2002, trademarked its method of putting on its foundation as “Swirl, Tap, Buff” and packed brushes into its introductory kit.^[7] Swirling, tapping and buffing is exactly the work a kabuki does.