Book Review: Asian Faces: The Essential Beauty and Makeup Guide for Asian Women by Taylor Chang-Babaian

This is an excellent book for beginners (to which group I belong). I do not know if it will be helpful to non-beginners.

It does start from the very very beginning - with pictures of mascara, blush, gloss etc followed by six pages of brushes (with descriptions). It then goes on define the terminnology for various parts of the face. This may sound anal, but turned out really useful when trying to duplicate the looks in the book (where's the apple of the cheek?) (Remember, beginner here :)  )

Next there are sections on skincare, makeup removers and base makeup. This is followed by sections about the basic techniques for making up the eyes, lips, cheeks, how to apply foundation etc.

The looks are divided into day, night, cities, decades and costumes. Each look takes up two pages - a full page picture of the model on the left hand page, and brief step by step instructions on the right with swatches of the products used (useful when one is not quite sure what is the difference between peach and apricot). Most of the looks also include detailed instructions for the eyes and lips.

Generally the looks all seem to utilize the same basic techniques laid out in the "eyes" "lips" "cheeks" etc section. Nevertheless I still found the many looks helpful as guides to which shade of eyeshadow goes with which shade of lip color etc. The pictures also served as a guide to what color clothes would match the look.

Overall this is a good book for beginners - it provides an overview of basic techniques and inspiration for matching colors. Given the dearth of makeup books specifically targeted at Asians, I'd heartily recommend to anybody who has Asian features. However, this book does seem to be skewed more towards East Asians (although there are a couple of South Indian models) so South Indians may be better served just checking this book out from the library as opposed to buying it (unless they look East Asian of course).

Taylor Chang-Babaian will also have a book specifically on making up the eyes coming out in August 2010  and I can't wait for it to come out (where else on the face can I play with outrageous colors? :) )


***** because I'm a newbie