Makeup after 70 works best when it is subtractive, not additive: neutralize the discoloration first, then place a small amount of color exactly where it lifts. In this Fierce Aging session I made over Jana, almost 77, by starting at the eyes, color correcting before any base, and softening every black in her routine to brown now that her hair is white. It took less product than she was using, not more.
Watch the full session above, or read on for the complete breakdown of every step, placement and product.
Key takeaways
- Start at the eyes, not the face. Priming the lid first means your eyeshadow reads true instead of being muddied by the blue, pink and purple tones most of us develop there.
- Color correct before you reach for concealer. A sheer pass of peach means concealer only covers two small spots instead of the whole socket.
- Every placement angles up. Shadow at the outer corner goes up and slightly in, never out and down. Liner stops at the last lash and lifts toward the brow.
- When your hair goes white, black becomes the harshest thing on your face. Dark chocolate liner and brown mascara look softer without losing definition.
- A clear lip liner drawn just above your natural lip line stops feathering before it starts, and it is impossible to apply badly because no one can see it.
- The rule that you cannot wear liner under your eye after a certain age is not a rule. It came from society, and Jana retired it on camera.
Who is Jana, and why does her story belong on Fierce Aging?
I started the Fierce Aging series in March of 2019 and we are now filming our eighth season. Women come into my studio in their 40s through their 90s, and we have had a woman who was 101. What I get in exchange for doing their makeup is their history, and Jana's is among the most remarkable I have sat across from.
Jana is 76, almost 77, an author and a speaker. For 45 years she was married to the love of her life, and for the last five of those years she was his caretaker while he lived with ALS, until he passed. She told me plainly that caregiving aged her ten years and left her self-care running on empty. That is not a complaint, it is an accounting of what it costs to love someone all the way to the end.
Before any of that, she was told she had stage 3C ovarian cancer and that it was terminal. With chemotherapy and surgeries, the experts said, they could buy her two years. She was 56, and she describes that as the moment she came out of her shell, because the question stopped being whether she was ready and became: if not now, when? That now has lasted twenty years.
Which is why she belongs here. Jana is not in my chair to disappear politely into her seventies, she is here to come back to herself. Her three rules, delivered without hesitation: do not walk away from negative people, run; wear your good clothes every day and do not wait; and order dessert whenever you want.
Why do I always start with the eyes instead of the face?
Almost every tutorial starts with foundation. I start with the eyes for a practical reason: lay down a flawless base, drop eyeshadow fallout on it, and you are repairing your own work. More importantly, the eye area on mature skin needs to be assessed before it is covered, because what is happening on the lid dictates everything after.
Jana's first step was eye primer, applied with a concealer brush from the lash line up to the brow bone. Blues, pinks and purples settling into the lid is completely normal for us as mature women. Put eyeshadow straight onto that and the color you chose in the palette is not the color that shows up on your face. Priming lifts the discoloration so the shadow reads true, and gives it something to hold onto so it does not travel into the crease by lunchtime.
Then I anchor the face with brows before introducing color anywhere, because building color onto a face with no structure means adjusting everything twice. I used an ombré approach on Jana with two shades from the Skinny Brow Pencil range: taupe as the base and soft gray for depth. Her natural brows are good, just light enough that you can see a little skin through them, which is fine.
Here is the mapping, and it works on anyone:
- Find your start point. Run a line straight up from the outside of the nostril. That is where the brow begins.
- Find your arch. Follow the line of the nose up and out until you are over the iris. That is the highest point.
- Find your end. Go from the corner of the eye out to where the brow should finish.
- Fill with taupe using light, short strokes. You are adding definition, not drawing a shape.
- Go back in with soft gray at three points only: the front, the arch, and the tail. Not the full brow. This is what creates dimension instead of a flat block of color.
- Finish with brow mascara in a light application targeted at the gray hairs. It comes in clear, blonde, milk chocolate and cocoa, and I used milk chocolate on Jana.
I love brow mascara for exactly this reason. If you have a handful of white or gray hairs in the brow, you do not need to commit to tinting. You control it in ten seconds.
What makes eyeshadow and liner look lifted instead of heavy?
Placement, almost entirely. I chose Le Bottled Blonde for Jana, a three-well palette of sheens, because she already owns Rewrite the Rules, which is matte. The sheens are not glittery or sparkly; they pick up light, which is what a mature lid wants.
I pressed the middle shade onto the center of the lid with the flat shadow brush, then dusted the lightest shade under the brow bone. For the outer corner I switched to the tapered blending brush, which comes to a point like a pencil, and took the deepest shade up and slightly in. That direction is the whole game: take the dark shade out toward the temple and you are drawing a line that drags the eye down. Up and in creates lift. Then I blended with the fluffy eyeshadow blending brush until there was no demarcation at all.
You are also allowed to mix palettes. For a matte brow bone under a sheen lid, borrow the soft creamy shade from Strong Brew. My eyeshadows are talc-free, gluten-free and formulated silky on purpose so they work together instead of fighting each other.
For liner I used the waterproof pencil in dark chocolate. Look down, do not close your eye, and work right at the base of the lash. These pencils are soft deliberately so they do not drag on a delicate lash line. I stop at the last lash and flick up, because I want everything heading toward the brow. If your hands shake, do not chase a perfect line: lay it down and immediately sweep a short smudge brush across it, quickly, because waterproof sets fast and then stays exactly where you put it.
Should you switch from black to brown when your hair goes white?
Jana already had. She wore black mascara, black eyeliner and black on the brows for decades, and when she stopped coloring her hair and went white she realized she needed to soften. She was right, and it is one of the most useful adjustments a woman can make in her sixties and seventies. Black against white hair is a hard stop; brown gives you the same definition with a fraction of the harshness.
| Element | Black, on white or silver hair | Brown or dark chocolate |
|---|---|---|
| Upper lash line | Reads as a hard border; emphasizes any unevenness in the lid | Reads as lash density; the eye looks fuller, not outlined |
| Mascara | High contrast can make sparse lashes look more sparse | Softer edge, so gaps between lashes are less obvious |
| Lower lash line | Pulls the eye down and can look heavy by midday | Gives definition without weight; safe to wear three-quarters of the way |
| Brows | Flat and severe against gray or white brow hairs | Taupe and soft gray blend with the hair you actually have |
| Overall effect | The makeup is the first thing people see | Your face is the first thing people see |
I used Volume Up Mascara in brown on Jana, and technique matters as much as shade. Look down, go to the base of the lashes, rest, wiggle back and forth, then pull up. As we age, the lashes nearest the corners get short and stubborn and most mascara rolls over them. Working at the base catches them, and depositing product at the root gives you a little extra liner effect for free.
Then came the moment I wanted on camera. I went back with the brown liner along the lower lash line, three-quarters of the way in, and Jana said she had been told that at her age you do not put liner under your eye. I asked who told her that. She said: society. We said no to society. A little definition under the eye keeps you from losing its shape entirely, and it does not make anyone look like they are trying to be 25. The eyeliners range has softer shades to test against your own hair color.
Why does color correcting come before foundation on mature skin?
Because it means you need dramatically less of everything afterward. It is the biggest shift in how I do mature skin, and why Jana's finished face looks like skin rather than makeup.
We started with hydration: a serum pressed into the skin, and eye cream applied with the Cooling Eye Roller. You scoop the cream out with the roller ball instead of your finger, which keeps the product clean and smooths it in better than a fingertip, and it does not need to live in the refrigerator to feel cold. On a puffy morning, These Bags Are Designer eye masks do the same job over a longer timeline.
Then Fiercely Smooth Face Primer, worked into the T-zone first and then outward, concentrating where the texture is. One note that trips people up: it is an airless pump with no straw inside, so you have to prime it when you first get it. Several presses with nothing coming out is not a faulty bottle.
Now the correctors. Just Peachy is our best friend as mature women. On Jana it went under the eye to brighten, and it is equally good on sunspots and melasma. The point is not to cover but to lift the color so your concealer does not have to work hard. No Redness handles rosacea and broken capillaries, usually around the nose: pinpoint the specific red spots, do not paint the area. The color correctors range covers the different tones.
Blending uses two brushes. The Foundation Buffing Brush handles the larger areas, and Jana was surprised that buffing does not wipe corrector away, it genuinely blends it out. The concealer brush, dual-ended as a concealer and lip brush, handles detail work: under the eye and tight in around the nose, where a large brush skates over the crease entirely.
Only then did the base go on. I swatched both BB Crème shades on the side of Jana's face and the light medium disappeared completely, so that is what we used. It is fragrance-free, built with Kakadu plum for vitamin C and hyaluronic acid, and I think of it as a complexion blur rather than a foundation. The semi-matte finish is the sweet spot on mature skin: not glossy, not flat. For more coverage, Serum Foundation is the step up. Jana switched away from traditional foundation and told me she loves it because it is light, it blends like crazy, and she no longer feels like she is wearing pancake. The whole face range is built on that principle.
Concealer came last, not first. After the BB Crème, Jana needed exactly two small dots of Creamy Concealer under the eyes, which is the entire argument for this order: do your base, then assess what is left to fix. Our concealers move with the skin rather than sit on top of it.
What are the most common makeup mistakes women over 70 are still making?
These come up in nearly every Fierce Aging session:
- Applying eyeshadow to an unprimed lid. Your shadow will never look like the pan color if the lid underneath is blue or purple.
- Taking the dark outer shade outward. Out means down. Up and slightly in is the only direction that lifts.
- Skipping color correction and overloading concealer instead. Heavy concealer on thin under-eye skin creases within hours. A sheer peach layer first means you need a fraction of it.
- Staying with black after your hair has gone white. It was the right shade for decades. It is not anymore.
- Panicking when blush lands too low. Pick up the Foundation Buffing Brush, which still has BB Crème on it, and lift the edge upward. Nothing is ruined.
- Powdering the whole face. Setting powder belongs under the eyes and across the T-zone. Taking it down the cheeks dulls the freshness you just built.
- Using too much product and then fighting it. With BB Crème especially, a small amount goes further than you think.
- Believing a rule you never agreed to. No liner under the eye, no bright lipstick, no shimmer after 60. You cannot know a shade is wrong on you until it is on you.
For cheeks I used the Palm Beach cream blush stick, blended with the small flat brush, then warmed the cheekbone with Crème Brûlée, a hybrid bronzer that is genuinely hard to overdo. When your hair goes gray or white you lose color in the face, and putting it back in the cheeks is the fastest correction there is. Apply slightly more than feels right before you leave, because cream blush melts into the skin over the first hour. My brushes and tools are labeled on the barrel so you are never guessing which one you are holding.
How do you stop lipstick from feathering after 70?
With a border you cannot see. I used a clear waterproof lip liner on Jana first, outlining the lips and concentrating on the lines that like to take lipstick on a detour. Because it is invisible it is impossible to apply badly, which makes it the most forgiving product in the routine. Draw slightly above your natural lip line, not on it. Nobody can see where clear liner lands, so put it where it gives you the most.
Then the waterproof liner in Organza, a step deeper than Cameo, chosen to bridge the lipstick and gloss. Then NikRay applied with the lip brush from the kit, which is the combo I was wearing that day. NikRay has a sheen rather than a flat matte, and on mature lips that sheen is doing real work: matte reads as dry, and dry reads as older. A gloss with gold flecks over the top shifts the whole thing toward cranberry.
Hydration underneath matters more than color on top. Rose Lip Balm should go on when you start prepping the skin rather than at the lip stage, which is my own frequent mistake. At night, Dream Melt Lip Mask takes over: shea butter, safflower oil, fragrance-free, with a silicone tip. The lips collection is organized around building this way, layer by layer.
To set, I used Nikita Banana with the Soft Set Technique brush, pressing gently under the eyes. I created that brush for exactly this: enough control to set the under-eye without packing powder into it, light enough to tap the T-zone if you run shiny. I left the cheeks alone. Jana credited her gua sha when I told her she had no wrinkles. We do not call them wrinkles here anyway. We call them love lines.
What is the real lesson of Jana's three rules?
She flew here from California and cut the tags off a piece of luggage she bought in 2009, because this was new and she wanted to move ahead rather than save it. Seventeen years of keeping something good for an occasion that never quite qualified.
It is the same instinct behind the lipstick you have never worn, the palette you decided would not suit you without opening it, and the liner you stopped wearing because someone implied you were too old for it. As Jana put it, it is fun to try something new, because otherwise you are stuck in another decade. Not a bad decade. Just a previous one. Think of makeup the way you think about fragrance: one liner, one lipstick, one gloss and two palettes you can mix is enough for genuinely different looks, and that is where a signature comes from. Our best sellers are a place to start if you are rebuilding.
One more thing she said, which I think about often. She saw a doctor recently who kept referring to "the elderly," over and over, until she stopped him and said there were only two people in the room, so who exactly was he talking to? She was given two years to live twenty years ago and she is still correcting people who try to put her away early. When she looked in the mirror at the end of the session, she said: this is what happy looks like.
Bottom line
Makeup for women over 70 is not about covering more, it is about correcting first so you can wear less. Prime the lid before any shadow goes on, anchor the face with structured brows, angle every placement upward, color correct before you reach for concealer, soften black to brown as your hair lightens, and set only where you need it. Jana walked out looking more like herself, using fewer products than she walked in with. That is the whole point of Fierce Aging, and at almost 77 she will tell you she has not peaked yet.
FAQ
Should I apply eye makeup before or after foundation?
Before. Eyeshadow fallout then lands on bare skin and wipes away without disturbing your base, and it lets you assess the eye area honestly before anything covers it.
Why does my eyeshadow look different on my lid than in the pan?
Because your lid has its own color. Most of us develop blue, pink or purple tones on the lid as we age, and shadow applied on top mixes with that. An eye primer neutralizes the discoloration so the shade you chose is the shade you see, and keeps the shadow from migrating into the crease.
Can women over 70 wear eyeliner on the lower lash line?
Yes. The idea that you cannot is a rule nobody agreed to. Keep it soft, use brown or dark chocolate rather than black, and take it about three-quarters of the way in rather than to the inner corner. That gives definition without weight.
Should I switch from black to brown mascara as my hair turns gray or white?
In most cases, yes. Black creates high contrast against white hair, which can make sparse lashes look sparser. Brown gives you the same lift with a softer edge. You can also wear black on top and brown on the bottom as a middle ground.
What is the difference between BB cream and foundation for mature skin?
BB Crème is lighter than a foundation but more than a tinted moisturizer. It blurs the complexion rather than covering it, and finishes semi-matte so skin looks neither glossy nor flat. For more coverage, a serum foundation gives it without going heavy.
Do I really need a color corrector if I already use concealer?
It means you need far less concealer, which is the real benefit. A sheer pass of peach lifts darkness under the eye and over sunspots so concealer only handles what is left. Heavy concealer on thin under-eye skin creases; two small dots over a corrected base does not.
How do I keep lipstick from feathering into the lines around my mouth?
Use a clear waterproof lip liner as an invisible border before any color goes on, concentrating on the lines where your lipstick travels. Draw slightly above your natural lip line. Because the liner is clear, there is no visible mistake to make.
Where should I apply setting powder on mature skin?
Under the eyes and across the T-zone only. Pressing a small amount under the eye with a soft brush sets concealer without packing powder into fine lines. Taking powder down over the cheeks dulls the freshness and makes the finish look flat.
