What is Ganguro Makeup?
- The base makeup is a wheat-colored skin tone (close to dark brown).
- Darken your face with foundation
- A white shadow (highlight) is applied along the bridge of the nose.
- Eyeshadow around the eyes is applied extensively, reaching below the eyebrows.
- A gradient is created using white shadow and colored eyeshadow.
- Draw thick eyeliner.
- Apply mascara multiple times.
- Eyebrows are drawn thin and angled.
- Cheeks are lightly brushed with orange or brown-toned blush along the cheekbones.
- Lips are done in beige or light pink "shiny lip" (pearlescent lipstick).
Ganguro gal makeup features prominently highlighted eyes with eyeshadow and white lines.
Base Makeup
In the era of ganguro gals (late 90's), the darker the skin, the better.
For this reason, the mainstream base makeup was a dark brown, wheatish skin, but surprisingly, there were many gals who used foundation or face powder to create a wheatish skin without tanning their faces.
The reason is that your makeup won't adhere well.
Many ganguro gals only tanned their bodies because tanning dries the skin and makes makeup difficult to apply.
Among the ganguro gals, dark skin foundations (powder type) from brands such as MAC and Revlon, as well as face powders such as "Shiseido Bronze Bronze" and "Visse Brownie Nuance Veil," were popular.
Highlight
Ganguro gals often used white eyeshadow for highlights, and the highlights were so dark that they looked white.
For white eyeshadow, many children choose "Courreges (product number: No. 70, Pearl White)"!
This is a very popular cosmetic that is also loved by egg models.
Shading
For shading, I often used dark brown eyeshadow (from Maybelline or Courrèges).
It is mainly applied on the jaw line (face line), but sometimes it is placed on the side of the white shadow to make the bridge of the nose stand out!
Cheek makeup
For cheeks, orange and brown colors that are similar to the base color were popular.
Speaking of cheek, it's "bourgeois"!
So many ganguro gals loved Bourjois blush.
Eyebrow makeup
Draw the eyebrows thinly and at an angle.
I didn't use any eyebrow mascara, but instead used a pencil type and powder type to create a thin finish.
As for the eyebrow pencil, "Shiseido's Eyebrow Pencil" is very popular!
It was a popular cosmetic that could be purchased at a low price of 200 yen per bottle.
Eye makeup
Whiten the entire area around your eyes with white eyeshadow.
The standard practice was to layer blue shadow over the eyehole area to create a gradation.
Pearl and glitter color shadows are more popular than matte ones!
In particular, Kate's “Flash Crush” series of eyeshadow palettes were extremely popular and were loved by many ganguro gals.
The standard colors for color shadows were blue, but some children changed the color depending on the season, and pastel colors (green and yellow) were popular in spring.
Teardrop-shaped stickers
After applying your eye makeup, apply teardrop-shaped stickers around your eyes.
The amount and position varies from person to person, such as applying 2 to 3 pieces to the outer corner of one eye as a one point, or applying it to both outer corners.
Just add glittery teardrop-shaped stickers to make you look more like a ganguro gal!
Many ganguro gals wore teardrop-shaped stickers only during the summer, not during the year.
Lip makeup
Beige and light pink lipsticks with pearls "shiny lip" are popular!
Lipsticks from Courrèges and MAC were popular, and many gals especially loved the colors "Courreges 304 and 305" and "MAC Sis and Miss."
When you want to look even more like a gal, concealer comes into play!
By erasing the color of my lips with Canmake's concealer and then applying lipstick, I was able to increase my gal-like look.
Ganguro gal eye makeup procedure
This time, we will introduce the makeup of C-chan, who was a gal during the Ganguro era.
Apply eye shadow
Blue eyeshadows are popular!
Among them
- kate’s flash crush (blue)
- Courrèges’s eyeshadow trio
was used by many ganguro gals.
First, apply the white shadow from the blue eyeshadow palette around your eyes.
Above the eyes, apply over a wide area from the eyelids to the bottom of the eyebrows, and below the eyes, apply in a width of about 5mm from the inner corner to the outer corner of the eye.
Layer color shadow (mainly blue) on top of that to create a gradation.
The place to apply the color shadow is around the double width line.
Draw eyeliner
For eyeliner, she used “Bibo Eyeful Eyeliner Black”, which was a standard pencil at the time.
Pull it around the entire eye area.
It is said that filling in the area around the eyelashes with black will improve your eye appeal.
Draw a white line under the eyes
Speaking of Heisei gals, white eyeliner!
Use a white Courrèges pencil (Color Pencil 07 Pearl White) to draw a line around the inner corner of the eye and the tear bag.
Adding this white line instantly adds to the gal look, so it was essential.
Apply mascara to eyelashes
There is an image of gal = false eyelashes, but Ganguro was a gal makeup style before false eyelashes became popular, so I finished the eyelashes with mascara only.
Mascara that was popular among ganguro gals
- Max Factor's Stretch Mascara
- Maybelline's Great Rush
I used a curler to raise my eyelashes and then layered mascara over and over again to make my eyes look bigger.
One trick that gals used at the time to keep their eyelashes curled was to burn the eyelash curler with a lighter before using it.
It's a technique that has been passed down among gals for a long time, but did you know about it?
Nowadays, we have a convenient item called a hot eyelash curler, but back then there was no such thing (or it wasn't popular enough), so this is a technique created by gals thinking about how to keep their eyelashes curled for a long time.
You can see that ganguro gal makeup at the time used eye shadow and white lines to make the eyes stand out.
Unlike in recent years, flashy color shadows such as blues are more popular than browns!
The key to the makeup was to brighten up the eyes.
