“Effortless beauty is a Chanel way of life,” the French makeup ad proclaims. With just the right eye shadow, mascara, eyebrow pencil, foundation, powder, lipstick, gloss, contouring—neither too much nor too little—a woman can look completely natural, as though she were wearing no makeup at all. And hair is meant to be fashionably disheveled, as suggested by L’Oréal’s Messy Cliché hairspray and its French Froissé (mussed) cream. It’s all about subtlety. It’s about giving the appearance of being simultaneously relaxed, chic, and classy. But how to achieve that look?
To begin, there’s the getting dressed. Imagine the young woman who rises to contemplate the short pencil skirt or the loose, wide-legged denims, the ankle boots or the baskets (sneakers), the opaque tights or the patterned ones, and the way to make everything match without seeming too matched. As a last touch, she ties on a scarf, which must look thrown on (not carefully tied around the neck like a noose). First, the scarf must be fluffed up by shaking it, then folded in two, and then placed loosely around the neck. Then one end is inserted into the other end and turned over, then one of those ends is threaded back through the available loop, and then the scarf must be shaken again to look windblown. See? Effortless.
