Books By François Nars

I picked up a copy of Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself By François Nars a few days ago at Kinokuniya. It’s one of François Nars’ newest books and it retails at about S$65 – I can’t remember the exact price. I thought it would be selling at over a hundred dollars. The other copy was from 2001 entitled Makeup Your Mind By François Nars.

I assume Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself is a sequel of the original, Makeup Your Mind because it contains missing parts to the original, making both a pretty complete set. In the original, there were 63 professional models, many of whom were well-known, were shown with and without makeup.

According to François Nars, the goal of the book was three-fold;-

to inspire readers to experiment and express themselves with makeup
to showcase the transforming power of makeup
to demonstrate in the clearest, most straightforward manner, how to apply the looks documented in its pages.

Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself takes the concept to the next level by forgoing professional models entirely. François Nars wanted to use real people as subjects in order to prove that makeup is for everyone. The people in his new book come from every corner of the globe, the United States, Sweden, Norway, England, France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Bosnia, South Africa, Iran, Pakistan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Guyana. Many are mixed race and they range in age from 16 to 64.

The design of this book features large-scale, full-page images of women and men photographed with and without makeup, the same as the original. The looks in this book range from natural to dramatic. Some focus on the eyes, other on lips, still others on palettes of colour and skin effects. What it all adds up to – is a makeup cookbook of sorts.

If a look is a success, you can work it into your wardrobe of makeup “faces”. If not, you can just wipe it off and try something new. I try not to take it too seriously and neither should you. Follow your instinct. Wear what makes you happy.

Makeup Your Mind consists of looks focusing on the eyes and lips to looks featuring neutrals, shimmer, monochrome & suntan, pastels and colours. Photographs captured were faced front and descriptions were typed on.

Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself features the skin, playing with colours, perfecting the makeup and polishing your makeup. There are more men featured in this book as compared to the original and in the section of polishing your makeup, it consists of women who are more matured.

All in all, I like the original, Makeup Your Mind more because it has more creative looks and use of colours – something I can refer to as inspirations. However, Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself contains more wearable looks in my opinion which really helped to spice up my wardrobe of makeup “faces”.

Both these books are really hardy, it comes with a cover which I have lost mine for the first book.

I would say these books are something to look into investing if you are adventurous in creating looks, if you are a makeup artist or you simply love makeup because the looks are timeless.