5 Makeup Tips For Older Women by 64 Year Old Makeup Artist Turned Super Model Cindy Joseph!

Cindy Joseph’s makeup tips for Boomers

1. Use cream-based, not powder-based cosmetics on your face. Powder adds texture to skin that already has developed texture.

2. A good rule of thumb for lipstick is to find a tone that matches your inner lip or gums.

3. Women older than 50 tend to lose definition in their eyebrows. Just go with that. Don’t recreate the brows you had in your 20s.

4. This is a hard one, but do not wear any eye shadow at all (and especially no contour eye shadow in the crease because it gives the appearance of deepening the crease). A little bit of mascara is OK.

5. Tinted moisturizers don't work, If you’re going to use a foundation to even out skin tone, find one that gives coverage but doesn’t add texture. Be willing to spend money on a foundation and take your time to experiment and find the exact right shade. Matching your skin tone exactly is critical.

"Less is more as women age," says beauty makeup artist and model Cindy Joseph. Her new line a super multi-tasker.

Is there a woman who hasn’t dabbed a little lipstick on her cheeks for a quick touch-up?

“The whole idea of less is more, that women shouldn’t be slaves to dozens of makeup products, is what I really believe in,” said Cindy Joseph, a makeup artist and model who’s pared down her own cosmetics kit to just a few items. Three of them are multi-use cream sticks from her new makeup line, Boom.

"These really simplify my makeup bag," says Joseph, "because there are just three sticks, and they are all multi-tasking."

The products come in identical chubby white tubes that fit in the palm of your hand. There’s a sheer berry for cheeks, brow bone, eyes, lips, forehead and neck; a sheer iridescent champagne for the inner corner of the eye, cheekbones, shoulders, and decollete for added radiance; and an all-in-one moisturizer for lips, cuticles, around the eyes and anywhere else. Wherever you have skin, this moisturizer works.

They are $27 each and sold only on her website.

And this line is not just for Boomers like Joseph. “Boom is the sound of a revolution in cosmetics,” she says. “Cosmetic companies are constantly adding products; I’m taking away.

Jennifer Aniston travels light, and loves the simplicity of Boom. When asked by Self Magazine what is in her purse when she leaves for the day, she said, "Boomstick Color: It’s an all-in-one stain for eyes, cheeks and lips that’s so much fun."

Like Joseph, Aniston also believes in aging gracefully and not overdoing it on the makeup. ”There is this pressure in Hollywood to be ageless," said Aniston. "I also understand that age is kind of awesome… Don’t over-product—that’s the other thing."

“Mine is the only company that is pro-aging, not anti-aging." says Joseph, who thinks that many women put too much energy into looking younger.

“The biggest makeup mistake that older women make is putting on too much under eye concealer,” she says. “At home it might look okay, but in the daylight, it just looks like a bunch of gunk under your eyes. The older you get, the less makeup you should wear. It’s not a blank canvas anymore.”

As women age, she says, looking fresh—rather than made-up—is the key. 

"My products recreate the way you look when you are at your happiest: when you're under the mistletoe, when you're dancing or laughing with your girlfriends, or in the swing of romance."

Judging by the photos and videos, Joseph, who recently turned 60, needs no makeup at all. She’s one of those Emmylou Harris beauties with lovely features, luminous skin and long silver hair, who spends just a few minutes a day on her face before she’s out the door. But Joseph admits it took her whole life to find this radiant and natural look.

After growing up in the Bay Area – Mission San Jose High School, Fremont, class of ’69 – she moved to Paris in the early ’80s and later to New York.

“I was a classic California flower child,” she says. “I went to Haight Ashbury on the weekends, the Fillmore West, the Avalon Ballroom. I was at the center of it all. People still ask me to this day: ‘Are you from San Francisco?’ ”

Joseph married young, had two kids and began her makeup artist career in San Francisco in the late ’70s, working for Macy’s, Esprit de Corp and others.

“I always had the smallest kit and the fewest products of any of my colleagues,” she remembers. "My models loved me for it."

She let her hair go gray in her late 40s, and just like that, she was spotted on a New York sidewalk by a scout for the fashion photographer Steven Miesel and has been a model ever since, featured in ads for Target, L.L. Bean, Dolce & Gabbana, DKNY, Olay, Nivea and others.

With years of experience on both sides of the brush, Joseph finally went into the cosmetics business herself.

“I’d done makeup for two decades and when I created this line, I created what I would want in my own kit,” she says. “I wanted to do a line that was not about hiding, but was about revealing.”

I also wanted to create products that aren't just safe for skin, they're good for skin," says Joseph, who spent years in the industry sorting through makeup ingredients, eliminating what was unsafe or unnecessary.

"I wanted products made with certain values: Hand made. Absolutely cruelty free. Never tested on animals. These were not negotiable."

So, Boom is simple: fewer products, fewer ingredients, made well.

"When somebody says to you, 'Wow, did you fall in love?' That's successful makeup."