1920s Flapper Makeup for Halloween

1920s Flapper

Complete your 1920s flapper or "Chicago" musical character costume with a made-up face straight from the Roaring Twenties. Makeup from the 1920s was dark and dramatic and wasn't concerned with looking "natural." The movie starlets had to emphasise their features so they would show up on screen, which is what set the tone for the make-up of the decade.

Matt Finish

Before applying any make-up, wash your face and exfoliate with a gentle cleanser so that you have a clean, smooth surface on which to work. A gentle and inexpensive exfoliate that may already be in your kitche, is sugar. Gently scrub your skin in circular motions with the sugar until it dissolves on your skin and rinse it off thoroughly to remove dead skin cells. Apply a powder one or two shades lighter than your skin colour all over your face. Women didn't have cream foundation in the 1920s, so they used powder which gave their skin a matt finish. Be sure to blend it in around the edges of your face.

Rouge

Suck in your cheeks and place two fingers next to your nose to help you find where to apply a cream blush. Dab a small amount next to your fingers and blend it out along the apples of your cheeks, or the fleshy round part, and back along your cheek bone. Work in circular motions, concentrate the colour on the apples of your cheeks and blend well along the edges. Use a colour such as light red or raspberry, which were the main colours of rouge in the '20s.

Cupid's Bow

Choose a deep red, reddish-plum or red-orange colour of lipstick and a matching lip liner pencil. Start a line directly above your natural line, above one of the points in the middle of your upper lip. Draw the line down between the two points in an arch and up above to the other point. This is the beginning of your cupid's bow. Bring the lines down to the inner part of the corners of your mouth to make your mouth look shorter. Make sure you bring the lines down to the same point on either side of your mouth so it looks even. Draw the bottom lip so that it arches downward right below the lip line in the middle of your lower lip. Fill in the lines with your lipstick.

Bold Brows

Accentuate your eyebrows with a light brown eyeliner or eyebrow pencil, if you have blond to light brown hair, or a black or dark brown pencil if you have dark hair. Flappers often shaved their eyebrows off completely and drew them back on, but if you don't want to do this, apply powder to your eyebrows to camouflage them and draw a thin line starting from the inner corner and slope it downward under your natural eyebrow. Thicken the line slightly at the inner corners and gradually make it thinner toward the outer corners.

Dramatic Eyes

Apply a light grey, light blue or turquoise eye shadow from your upper eyelashes to right below your eyebrows and blend it well along the edges. Load some medium grey or darker blue on the tip of an eye shadow brush, apply it along the edges of your eyes, all the way around and blend. Brush a dark grey shadow in the crease of your eyes and concentrate it in the inner, upper corners of the crease. Line along the edges of your lashes with black liquid liner and finish with two coats of black mascara. Don't worry if your lashes look a little spidery; this look was common among flappers, as it emphasised the lashes.

Ta Dah!