I am a 27 year old woman of (probable) Korean ethnicity (I was adopted and whoever my birth parents were are untraceable). I grew up in a white family in a small hick town in PA where Asians were unheard of (lol, for ex. at age 15 a record store owner truly thought I was Yoko Ono, excitedly pointed to a poster of the Beatles/John Lennon and called all of the employees over to look at "John Lennon's wife in our town"! Another time, a 19 year old student told me, "Its so cool that I met you because now I can say I met a real life Asian, because before you came along I thought Asians only lived in the TV!")
My adoptive mom has never worn make up in her whole life - even for her wedding!! Obviously, I was clueless about makeup, clueless regarding my appearance in general growing up. The time period was right before Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, and other beautiful Asian actresses began to appear in common media and grace the beauty ads of women's magazines.
I was very self conscious because I had no idea what I looked like, I know it sounds weird.. I used to search magazines and TV shows, to no avail.. Ppl told me I looked exactly like Yoko Ono/Connie Chung/and Lisa Ling of Channel One news (in High School). I didn't think I looked like any of them but I didn't know what I looked like either, so I was just confused.. I had no clue what to do about make up, so I pretty much ignored it, gaining names like pizza face because of horrible acne...
Anyway, sorry about the ramble...
I WISH I HAD A BOOK LIKE THIS GROWING UP. I am sure many other Asian women would have found this book as life changing as I would have.
In my early 20's, when I finally started gaining confidence about my looks, I bought every make up book that there was.. all of the Kevin Aucoiyn books were my favorites, because of the creativity, variety, limitless possibility, and stunning beauty of the images... I was stunned by the transformations done by makeup alone, and this is when I first began to view makeup as an art form.
I began to take pictures of myself experimenting with all different types of makeup looks. The only thing was, I could never understand why some of the looks would not work on me, and all of the ones that did I had to spend hours of confusion 'adapting' them to fit me, eyes especially. It was very frusterating to find looks that I loved, but couldn't figure out why they did not work, or looked completely different. I wondered if I was doing something wrong, or at more frusterating times, if something was just wrong w/ my face, if I was defective in some way, since the looks worked on my friends that I made up.
There are only 3 other books that have direct info for Asian women (Asian Beauty by Margaret ?, a small book by Jaceyln that took 6 weeks to arrive from Amazon, and Iman's Beauty of Color book). The first one disappointed me as far as the makeup tips went, but I thought it was nice for teenagers in situations like mine was because of the emphasis on Asians being beautiful too and the role models/famous Asian women... The 2nd one was a big disappointment - it was so small and didn't have many looks at all. It labeled eyes into 4 categories, and the whole techniques revolved around trying to make a "double eyelid" look - and by the end I had no idea what type of categories my eyes fell into, because they are very small but I do have a lid. Iman's, even though it was for all women of color, was the best of those because of the wide variety of looks, and truly celebrated all shades of women of color... The only thing was, since the book focused on many races, it wasn't directly presented to Asians of course, since that was not the aim of the book. I would highly recommend that title as well.
I was ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY the moment I flipped through Asian Faces by Taylor Chang-Babaian. The photographs were stunning, and I had never in my life seen such a variety of Asian women. I'm definitely no longer a beginner by now, so typically the first section of makeup books (a breakdown of the various cosmetics and basics) never provides me w/ anything new. However, I found myself reading and re reading the sections on layering, eyeliner, contouring, and other basics that she shed new light upon.. it was finally like the light bulb in my head clicked on, and every Asian adaptation of looks made sense. (the eyeliner close to the lashes was something I always thought was essential, I had a photo shoot once where the make up artist said that was wrong but I felt in my heart I looked better w/ it.. Taylor confirmed I was right after all!) Total beginners will find the first part of the book easy to follow, and advanced makeup artists will find tons of inspiration (and probably learn quite a few new tricks as well!!)
I LOVE how Taylor displays endless creativity in her looks... the gorgeous full size pictures make some of the looks seem complex, but on the other side of the page she breaks everything down into steps, w/ an intensive focus paired w/ a close up picture of the more complex techniques. It is the morst thorough examination of the looks and best system of explaining the steps in any make up book I've ever seen!
I also love how she puts the focus on the variety and beauty and art of makeup merging w/ her models, as opposed to focusing on "how to make a double eyelid" or other tips that might as well be saying, "how to make your eyes look less Asian".. or other things that make you feel flawed to be Asian. Instead, she celebrates the diversity of the many Asian women of the world.
The book has seemingly endless looks, format being similar to Making Faces or Face Forward in the looks section which is divided into :
Day, Evening, Cities (such as looks of LA or NYC), Period Looks (I LOVED this section.. I never realized these looks that I admired so much but was unable to adapt in Kevyn's books were even possible for Asian women, until now!), Special Occasion, and Costume.
FINALLY, I can try every look out of a book directly from the instructions, instead of spending frusterating hours attempting to adapt looks that usually never looked the same or don't work on me at all. This book exceeded anything I could ever imagine. I did a 1920's period look last night for the first time ever - w/ no makeup remover involved! The days of irritated red eyelids from rubbing off products over and over, the nights of being the latest one out for a night on the town because my special night out makeup took an hour longer than the other girls... Those times are over!!
My only complaint is, I wish this book would have existed 12 years ago, and there better be more.. many many more from this groundbreaking author!
