Stacy London On Quietly Quitting Makeup

Stacy London spent decades telling women how to feel confident in what they wear. Now, she’s asking a different question: What happens when what used to work stops working?

"I feel like I've started to quietly quit makeup," she told Rose-Marie when she sat down across from her in Savannah. Not as a confession exactly. More like something she'd just been realizing for a few years now. "Makeup started to make me look like a caricature. I don't want to look silly. I don't want to look funny. I looked weird, like I was trying too hard."

So she stopped. Not all at once. Just by reaching for less, skipping the steps that used to be non-negotiable, and edging away from a routine that had quietly stopped working.

Real Talk About Makeup For Mature Skin

Stacy didn't necessarily come to Savannah for a tutorial, but Rose-Marie being who Rose-Marie is, and Stacy being who Stacy is, it just naturally became one. And when two women over the age of 50, who've spent decades in beauty sit down across from each other with a camera running, the conversation went exactly where you'd expect it to.

The thinning skin. A more bony structure that emerges as the soft tissue retreats. The lipliner that draws a stale, dehydrated ring around your mouth by 4 p.m. The top lip that—as Stacy put it—is "receding like the Malibu shoreline".

The makeup that used to work and somehow doesn't anymore.

"You know what's really interesting?" Rose-Marie said. "Social media has kind of brainwashed us into thinking we have to do makeup like they're doing on there." She paused. "And as you get older, when you start doing that—I'm sorry, it's way too heavy. You end up doing all this sculpting and contouring. You look like a skull."

What "quitting" Was Actually About

The thing about Stacy's quiet quitting is that it wasn't really about makeup.

It was about every product, technique, and rule that stopped being designed for the face she actually has now. The contour map drawn for someone else's bone structure. The five anti-aging creams stacked on top of each other doing nothing but sitting there. The powder that makes mature skin look powdered, the foundation that cracks, the lipliner that wears down into a desperate-looking outline.

She wasn't quitting beauty. She was quitting the version of beauty that wasn't going to follow her into the next chapter. What she didn't have yet was a replacement.

It's Not About Anti-Aging

There was a lot Stacy and Rose-Marie agreed on, one of which is how they despise the word 'anti-aging'. "It's aging just thinking about anti-aging," Rose-Marie told Stacy. So she uses different words. Vitality. Luminosity. Succulent.

Rose-Marie also pointed out that she doesn't like to say cover or correct the way the rest of the industry does. She prefers shape and shade. And when it comes to RMS makeup, she prefers to refer to it as skincare meets color.

"This is why," Rose-Marie said, "when I do makeup, mostly on a mature woman, I tend to go for the shaping and the shading—not this paint by number contouring stuff. It's too harsh. You look like a skull."

What Stacy had been missing

Watching Rose-Marie work on her over the course of an afternoon and an entire face's worth of products, Stacy kept narrating her concerns and problems in real time.

• "I want to feel like you can see I'm moisturized, not that I'm wet."
• "I want what's new and fresh for me now."
• "I want to use product that accentuates the features I like on my face, but I don't know how to do that without feeling like I'm doing it with a Sharpie."

This is what most women who have quietly quit makeup are trying to articulate as well. Not 'I want to look like I did at 30', just: I want to look like me, just elevated, and with tools and products that don't feel like felt-tip markers on a face that's softened.

If you, like Stacy, have quietly stopped reaching for half the things in your makeup bag without knowing exactly why—stay with us. We're sharing more of Rose-Marie's conversation with Stacy here on the blog as well as on our social channels, so follow along!