Short of hooking up your skin to an IV spritzer of Caudalie Beauty Elixir or Tatcha Dewy Skin Mist, perennial dewy skin is impossible. It will last for but an hour and translate into shininess. But Korean makeup artists, who popularized the use of radiant-finish BB creams, have perfected the art of 24/7 dewy skin. “On Korean soap operas, the lead actresses all need to look radiant, but like they are not wearing any makeup,” makeup artist E.J. Kim told the Cut. Kim’s clients include figure skater Yu-Na Kim and the K-Pop group the Wonder Girls.
In this GIF set, Kim shows the Cut the importance of using a triple-radiant carrier system of BB cream, lip gloss, and a CC Cushion Compact to get a lasting “I just stepped out of the shower” glowy finish. I will not do this look the injustice of calling it no-makeup makeup, because with eight products and counting, it is far from that. But here’s how to look like you #justshoweredlikethis.
Step 1: E.J. Kim is a big supporter of the Beauty Blender, one of her favorite tools for creating a dewy complexion. Note the extra-large sponge. She likes to wet her sponge so much that it swells to almost three times its size. It’s slightly damp but a gentle way to stipple on skin coverage, which is key to creating a shower-fresh radiant look. She starts by dotting MAC Prep + Prime onto the quadrants of the face and then blending.
Step 2: For an extra-radiant look, Kim mixes Sua Young Mineral BB Cream, which is arguably Korea’s current most popular BB cream and loved for its luminosity. She mixes this onto a palette along with a touch of Clio Art Lipgloss in Glow Beige. Kim likes mixing the lip gloss in for its beige pearliness and because its slight tackiness helps the BB cream adhere to the skin.
Step 3: She dots the Beauty Blender into the BB-cream-and-lip-gloss mixture, and also into Amore Pacific’s Cushion Compact. She dabs the entire mixture onto the skin.
Step 4: To give shine in specific areas, like in the middle of the forehead and across the cheekbones, she dots on lip gloss directly and blends.
Step 5: As you can see, the combination gives a sort of “I just stepped out of the shower” look, with a shine focused on the cheekbones. For this step, Kim also applies some concealer underneath the eye.
Step 6: To create a flush in the cheeks, she blends two colors of Clio Art Lipstick together, a pink and a red. The two colors together create a multidimensional tone, which she also blends onto the cheek with a Beauty Blender.
Step 7: She adds a touch of pressed powder, patting it onto her hand for excess and pressing it onto the U-zone. The U-zone, which Kim uses to refer to to the area under the eyes and the chin, is the counterpart of the T-zone and often has areas of darkness that she tries to minimize. To make the skin appear more matte, she pats the powder puff into the skin, rather than gliding it across.
Step 8: The finished look.
