Pressed powder

Pressed powder is setting powder made to travel. The same kind of fine powder — talc or silica, a little pigment, sometimes mica — is mixed with a little binder and pressed into a cake in a shallow pan, most often in a compact with a mirror and a puff. The binder is what lets it survive a handbag; the price is a little less fineness than loose powder, which is why many people set with loose powder at home and carry pressed for the day.

Its neighbours are easy to confuse. A powder foundation looks much the same in the compact but carries far more pigment and is sold to cover; a pressed setting powder is sheer, meant to set a base and take down shine rather than to be the base. Blotting papers take oil away without adding anything. Pressed powder takes it up and adds a layer, which is its strength and its limit.

Most of the trouble with pressed powder comes from touch-ups. Powder pressed over oil turns patchy, and powder pressed over powder builds into a mask by late afternoon. So blot first, with a blotting paper or a tissue split to a single layer, then press a little powder onto the shiny places only: the sides of the nose, the centre of the forehead, the chin. Press and roll the puff rather than rubbing, which drags the base underneath. If the face has already had two touch-ups, blot the third time instead.

A clean puff matters more than it seems. A puff that has picked up oil from the skin carries it back to the cake, which then glazes over into a hard, shiny crust that no longer releases powder. Wash or change puffs often; if the surface has glazed, lift it off gently with clean tape or the edge of a spatula.

The tool in the compact is there for a reason. A velour puff presses powder into the skin and gives the most set for the least product, which is what a touch-up needs; fold it over a fingertip to reach the sides of the nose and the inner corners of the eyes. A brush sweeps pressed powder on more sheerly, for a lighter finish over the whole face at home, and dusts away any excess afterwards. A damp sponge is the wrong tool, since setting powders are made to go on dry. Keep the compact’s own puff for the compact, and wash it as often as you would a sponge.

Pressed powders come translucent or tinted. A translucent cake sets without changing the colour of the base; a tinted one evens tone a little, which helps where foundation has worn away by evening. Judge a tinted shade on the skin, not in the pan. Makers have long known that a pressed cake, with its smoother surface, looks paler than the same shade of loose powder,^[1] so swatch on the jaw and look in daylight.

The finish decides the rest. Matte, oil-absorbing formulas, some sold as blotting powders, are for shine; soft-focus powders are sold as blurring pores and texture; luminous ones add a sheen for dry skin. On deep skin, choose a tinted powder or one made for deep skin over a white translucent one, which can leave a grey cast.

Pressed powder was invented to solve a problem of carrying. As more women powdered their faces in the early twentieth century and wanted to touch up during the day, they needed powder that would travel: portable metal containers for loose powder existed from the 1890s, and others carried it in pill boxes, cigarette cases, snuff boxes or little bags of leather or silk.^[2] Loose powder spilled. A patent granted in 1921 for a vanity case “adapted to be carried in handbags, satchels, or the like” — two powder compartments whose puffs held the powder in place, a mirror and a space for a lipstick — named spilling as the problem it solved.^[3]

A pressed cake travelled better, but it was hard to make. Most early compressed powders were loose powder squeezed into a tablet. To fit a slim case the tablet had to be thin, and a thin tablet cracked under the puff, while one strong enough not to crumble was coarse and reluctant to give up its powder. Makers bound them with gums such as tragacanth, and by the 1930s some were made with no binder at all. Because a cake needed pressure to release its powder, the swansdown puff gave way to chamois, lambswool and cotton velour.^[2]

At the top of the market the case became jewellery. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a gold and silver compact made for Ostertag in Paris in the 1930s, its catch set with diamonds and rubies, and observes that for some owners the cigarette case, the compact and the vanity case became the successors of the gold box.^[4] The compact’s job has not changed. In the middle of her half-time show at the Super Bowl in February 2023, Rihanna stopped to check her make-up and took down the shine with her own brand’s Invisimatte Instant Setting + Blotting Powder, a pressed powder, on stage.^[5]