Glamour-girl looks can’t be bought off the rack—but they are well within reach for women of all complexions, especially now that companies have rolled out individually blended foundations and products geared for ethnic skin.

Elizabeth Arden, for instance, offers its Custom Color Foundation, which “ensures an exact replication of the natural color present in each individual’s skin,” said spokeswoman Shirine Coburn. Describing how the product is made, she said: “A unique optical skin reader (spectrophotometer) analyzes the skin’s light and color in three settings ... to calculate the pigment levels required to reproduce an exact color match.”

After that, she said, a beauty consultant enters a woman’s skin type and the level and kind of foundation coverage she prefers. “The Custom Color Lab then ... creates the individual formula,” she says. “Within minutes, a touch of a button dispenses the blended foundation.”

Makeup can make a big difference in playing up Asian American women’s best features, say Esther Hwang and Marie Villatuya. They should know: Both are beauty pageant winners.

Hwang, a staffer with San Francisco’s Department of Public Works, won the 1997 Miss Asian America title and the next year landed a job as Mayor Willie Brown’s scheduler. She turned heads around the city when news of her provocative Web site, www.esther.com, hit the newstands last year.

Hwang begins her face-care routine by washing first with warm water and then very cold water “to tighten up the pores.” When it comes to foundation and powder, Hwang recommends buying from lines tailored specifically for Asian Americans, such as that offered by Donna Fujii of San Francisco. Most mainstream U.S. lines don’t have the correct colors for Asian skin, and besides, they tend to overcharge, she says.

Hwang washes her hair every other day and uses “as much conditioner as it can take.” It’s best not to wash for two to three days before a hair styling, she says, so that the set holds better.

Villatuya, who won the 1992 Mutya Ng Pilipinas scholarship pageant, recommends Laura Mercier products—unsurprising, given that she works as a consultant for Madonna’s favorite line.

More generally, she notes that the perfect application of base involves an invisible blending into the neckline. A translucent, unpigmented powder will set the day’s look without caking up.
Kaishne Kashyap, a film director’s assistant in San Francisco, cautioned against washing the face with soap, which can dry skin. Instead, the Indian American brunette uses Basis, a facial wash available in most drugstores, then applies Clinique toner and Neutrogena moisturizer by day. At night, she washes with Basis and skips the toner, instead applying Neal’s Yard, an English cream that Kashyap found “from spending a lot of time in London; it’s very popular there.”

The Vitamin E and avocado enriched formula is available at San Francisco’s Neiman Marcus, unlike her favorite makeup: Mary Quant cake foundation in bisque. For that, she goes to New York or London.

After applying foundation, Kashyap might add a light dusting of powder from Benefit, which has outlets in the Marina and Mill Valley; a smudge of eyeliner;and Benefit’s blush in a rose tint. “Often I just put on lip liner and just smudge it in,” said Kashyap, who eschews lipstick for a Neutrogena SPF roll-up stick.

To preserve your looks, she said, “just keep your skin clean and protected from the sun.” Other parts of her beauty routine, she said, include working out and twice-a-month waxing sessions.
“Makeup can only enhance things,” she said.