Same lipstick (Picture: @wendyandmay1/TikTok)
Two friends with different skin tones want you to get better at shopping for makeup.
On TikTok, pals Wendy and May have started showing themselves wearing the same makeup to demonstrate how different colour cosmetics can look depending on your skin tone.
This is why if you see a friend wearing a lipstick in a shade you love, but then feel disappointed with the way it looks on you, you need to understand basic colour theory.
Jasmine Desouza, who is a makeup artist at 3INA, tells Metro: ‘Essentially, colour theory is a technique makeup artists use to make colours work beautifully and harmoniously together.
‘You’ve probably heard of colour correcting – where you can counteract a certain colour with its exact opposite on the colour wheel, for example balancing out redness with green.
‘But people are becoming more aware of how colour theory will affect how a certain lip colour will look on them.
‘On lips in particular, the natural undertones of your lips will play a key part in what a lipstick looks like on you.’
As the pigment in Wendy and May’s natural lip colour is so different, the result of the lipstick will likely be different too.
You can see it in their viral video, where a product on May looks brown, but on Wendy it looks orange.
However, other colours look less contrasting, like when they both tried blue.
‘Lipsticks are typically a blend of cool and warm tones, so if you have cool blue undertones in your lips, using a lipstick that’s more on the cool side will make your lips appear more purple or mauve,’ Jasmine explains.
‘In this case, you’d want to opt for a warmer toned lipstick to counteract the lips’ natural blue undertones.
‘If you’re struggling to find a lip colour that suits you, my simple trick is to hold the lipstick over your lips and look in the mirror. Does the colour make you feel good? This makes shopping for lipsticks a lot easier.’
People online were shocked to see the differences between the two friends side by side.
On their brown/orange lipstick video, one person commented: ‘It’s always crazy to me how the same shade can have such wildly different undertones on different people!’
Another said: ‘It looks amazing on both skin tones!! Shows up different on both! But wow!’
‘I love the orangy hue it’s pulling on dark skin and I love the deep vampy look on lighter skin,’ someone else wrote.
So next time you think about buying your friends lippie, consider how different the pigment in your skins is.
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Friends Wendy and May are giving us an education in colour theory.