The month of May feels like the right moment to warm up your skin tone, and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, showed exactly how to do it. The royal reached for the bronzer at her latest royal engagement, showing how the right shade and clever placement creates a flattering, radiant and lifted look in your 60s.
The Duchess looked her glowing best as she attended a parade at the Calvary Memorial in Hyde Park, in her role as Royal Colonel of The Queen’s Own Yeomanry. Her terracotta hat had been immaculately paired with a warm, golden-hour shade of bronzer, worn high on her cheeks to add beautiful light and shade to her features.
It’s exactly the way that bronzer should be worn as we get older, says celebrity makeup artist Ruby Hammer. ‘A lot of women stop wearing bronzer as they get older, as they’re not sure how to use it, and they often confuse it with contour,’ she tells GH. ‘But everyone looks good with bronzer when it’s done properly.’
‘Bronzer is one of the best things you can use on mature skin because you’re going to look immediately well and fresh,’ she says – as Sophie certainly proves.
Firstly, Sophie has followed the golden rule for ageless bronzer by keeping the placement very natural and avoiding the temptation to try to ‘sculpt’ in cheekbones. ‘You always want to place it on high points of the face, to mimic where the sun hits the face,’ says Ruby. ‘That’s what adds flattering dimension and a believable sun-kissed look.’
A reason Sophie looks so radiant and refreshed is down to her ‘lifted’, sparing bronzer placement. She’s kept it high, rather than making the common mistake of swiping it all over the face with a big brush. ‘If you do that, bronzer will just go on everywhere and look totally flat,’ says Ruby. ‘Your face will look the same, just darker and possibly muddy. If you place bronzer below the cheekbones, it visually drags features down.’ Using a medium-sized brush makes all the difference for getting the look right.
The Duchess has also added a subtle wisp of bronzer on the bridge of her nose, which pulls her look together. ‘It’s an area that’s very commonly missed,’ Ruby says. ‘But it looks strange if you don’t put bronzer there because that’s where the sun hits.’
Sophie’s bronzer colour is spot-on, too. ‘Just one or two shades darker than your skin tone is ideal, as it looks the most natural,’ Ruby tells us
To copy Sophie’s regally glowing look, GH recommends Ruby’s new Cheek Colour Stick, which has a flattering, subtle sheen and comes in a cream format that’s very forgiving on older skin.
A soft dusting of blusher in a terracotta shade pulled the sun-kissed look together. ‘You want to marry blush and bronzer, so that there’s no line of where it stops and where it blends’ says Ruby. ‘Put blusher high on the apples of the cheeks, then go up and out to give that lift.’
The look was finished with two Sophie beauty classics. First, a softly defined eye – smudged eyeliner added definition to the top lash line, while a generous coating of mascara made her eyes pop. Then came a sweep of pearlescent pink across the lips.
We know exactly who we’re turning to for summer beauty inspiration.
