Maybe it’s just because I’ve never got on with foundation, but I find the new Lancome Dreamtone add very surprising. The upshot of it is that, after spending £69 – yes, £69 – on this stuff, you can actually dare to step outside your home without a full face of makeup on. Oh, right.
Actually, I didn’t realise that I was supposed to be scared of being seen in daylight without a mask.
Marketing people are so clever. Before you know it, they’ve inserted a tiny worm of doubt in your head. ‘Should I really be out there, make-up free? Apparently it’s incredibly …..brave,’ we start to think. And when someone calls you ‘brave’, in that certain pitying tone, you know they actually mean you’re plain crazy. Or, worse, ugly. And there, in a couple of clever steps, you have it – we’re supposed to wear make-up outside. Every day. No excuses. Who knew?
Well, only women of course. Men can wander about being as ‘brave’ and bare-faced as they like. The rest of us have to throw on inches of slap – or solve a problem we didn’t know we had by getting Lancome’s Dreamtone. Which, by the way, is tinted. If it’s tinted, in my book it’s a foundation. Isn’t it? So, ladies of the world, you can now just about get away with not wearing foundation while going about your business, but only as long as you are wearing Lancome’s foundation – oops, Dreamtone.
Don’t get me wrong, I love make-up and I have a dressing table covered with pots and potions. I’m a complete sucker for every type of advertising. I rushed out to get my foundation colour analysed by Boots last year even though a) I don’t wear foundation and b) I banned my girls from going on the grounds that they definitely don’t need foundation. My colour is Calico, in case you’re curious. It’s just that I do very strongly resent being given made-up things to worry about, like the quality of my armpits (remember all those ads two years ago for deodorants that were ‘kind to your armpits’? What on earth was that about?) or the unacceptable nakedness of my face, when I have plenty of real stuff that could keep me awake at night if I let it.
Having said that, of course if lovely Lancome want to give me some to try, I’ll gladly do so. But I don’t think I’ll be rushing to buy myself a foundation to stop myself needing a foundation, thanks all the same.
