Fake it to Make it
‘She paints her face to hide her face,’ Arthur Golden wrote in ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’. And sure enough, traditional geisha make up, with its snow white face, deep crimson lips and dramatically black eyes and brows, has the effect of a mask. Nowadays, we glorify ‘natural beauty’. Even when we use fillers and tons of make-up, the idea is that we merely ‘accentuate’ our features. The geisha however, is the anti-Kardashian. To seduce, she goes for a complete transformation.
A few years ago, I went through a huge change in my life, both personal and professional. For my upcoming fashion show, I needed a spectacular new look to express this transmutation, but I realized that in our culture, we lack (beauty-)rituals that allow us to shed our old identities. Women will cut off their hair, but that’s about it! I needed to go geisha. So we created an almost otherworldly look for me: Virgin Queen meets geisha from outer space. Think metallic lace, rhinestone eyebrows and over-the-top make up (we echoed the
way a geisha leaves a line of bare skin to emphasize the artifciality of her look). How incredibly liberating it felt to become this new person, to celebrate the new me!
Now this wasn’t exactly an everyday-look, but I still often use the transformative power of make up and hair, and Japanese beauty rituals are still my great inspiration.
- Share
MD Friends
Building bridges
From the Erasmus Bridge and the Mercedes-Benz Museum to Qatar’s metro network; Ben van Berkel’s iconic landmarks bring people together in rapturous beauty, again and again. I talked with the Dutch architect and educator about sensuality, ‘healthy’ buildings and the remarkable parallels between our designs.
- Share
MD Friends
More than a feeling
Don’t ignore your emotions; they are much more powerful than you can imagine. By linking the magical world of emotions with hard science, Dutch scientist Pierre Capel, professor emeritus in experimental immunology, shows us the consequences of our feelings and the power of our minds. The message: we can do much more than we think. “Meditate. It’s the single best thing you can do for your health.”
- Share
Marlies Says
Keto curious?
The fact that I feel bikini-confident all year round is, of course, a nice bonus. But for me, the biggest payoff of following the keto diet is the way it optimizes my health and gives me tons of energy.
- Share
Marlies Says
Super (skin) food
‘If you can’t eat it, why put it on your skin?’. I pretty much live by this beauty adage. After all, with your skin being one of your body’s largest organs, anything – and I mean anything! – you put onto your skin will end up in your bloodstream.
- Share
 food "Pinterest")
