By Sheila
While I’ve talked about Way Bandy before, one of our readers mentioned his iconic book Designing Your Face, and I thought I’d give you a little peek into his brilliance.
Way Bandy, who is unfortunately deceased, was THE celebrity makeup of the 70’s and 80’s. As a former literature instructor, he used his teaching skills to write a book to help people understand the bare bones of makeup theory and application techniques – literally!
Way was a firmly believe that you should know your face … that is, you should be well acquainted with your bones and your facial structure, so you could understand exactly how and where to place makeup.
It’s fascinating, really, to see how he approached makeup applications. Very precise and he didn’t really use that many products. He just knew what needed to go where in order to maximize the final effect. There aren’t any photos of his actual clients, but there are plenty of diagrams to tell you what goes where.
Now, there’s one thing that always bothered me, which is the products he used. Transparent fluids? Where the heck are you supposed to get those? They may be products that are no longer available, but still ….
Designing Your Face is no longer in print, but it’s not hard to locate used versions on Amazon.
Have you read any Way Bandy books before?
Old makeup books are always fascinating to me. Some of them are even kind of funny when they have over the top trendy looks.
I’ve never heard of transparent fluid either. From the look of the product, maybe it’s like a stain?
I guess so …
I was given Way Bandy’s designing your face for my 15th birthday. It had just came out and I used the techniques for most of my makeup life. Never did find the liquids he talked of. He wrote another book Styling you face that remind me of Kevyn Aucoins works. Way Bandy was an inspiration to me then and now.
Candi – I was just looking at Way’s books again and it’s striking how he changed the way things were done!