May 11, 1998

Rosy cheeks and red lips are out. From trendy teenagers to the older, married lot, women are going in for wild hues.

By Anupama Chopra

Parul mehta is your average Bambaiya babe. She's 21 and in the final year of liberal arts at Jai Hind College. She "looooooved" Titanic ("that guy is really cool"), she loves sizzlers and she loves to read. When given parental permission, "which is not too often", she shakes a leg at popular night clubs like Three Flights Up. And she wears green nail polish. Which she alternates everyday with black, white, orange and the occasional bright blue. "It looks really good," she says. "Everyone's wearing it, so I don't feel strange."

Green, gold, black, blue, yellow, purple, orange, violet -- all the colours of the rainbow and beyond are now cosmetic fodder. The clich s about rosy cheeks and red lips are out of the window. Lips are black, cheeks are blue, and nails? Anything is possible, including stickers, illustrations and different shades for different fingers. Aspiring air hostess Meghna Khan prefers fluorescent pink eye shadow flecked with lines of black to match silver cheek glitter and white lipstick. Her friend Anjali specialises in black eyes -- absolute black from eyebrow to eyelash. "It's attractive in a weird way," says Khan. "The idea is to stand out." Indeed, the new millennium make-up shouts "assert yourself". And it's not just trendy collegiates sporting it. Just about anybody, from teenagers to older, married women, are going in for the funky look.

"Earlier, there were only two colours, pinks and reds," says Rohan Gala, manager at Make-Up Forever, a cosmetics store in Mumbai stocking the latest imported brands. "Now there are blues, golds, greens." Gala sells glittering blue powder for lips and cheeks, made by the Toronto-based M.A.C. company, for Rs 1,250 a bottle, tube lipsticks, which you can mix and match to create your own colour, at Rs 650 each and black lipstick for Rs 850 each. The steep prices are a small deterrent for the fans of funk. Make-Up Forever is doing brisk business, as are Mumbai's other imported cosmetics outlets like Heera Panna, where Chanel's purple nail polish can cost Rs 350 and Pierre Cardin's violet Rs 250.

The first ones on the funk frontline were models. Wild colours accompanied wild fashions. Soon, others were picking it up and even the normally conservative film industry followed suit. So Bollywood's ace image stylist Manish Malhotra has Karisma Kapoor wearing silver lipstick and electric-blue nail polish for a special appearance in a Tamil film. Scripts might curtail on-screen funk but off-screen wild nail polishes are all the rage. "I'm telling all my clients to look out for anything different and new," Malhotra says. "It's good to try unusual stuff."

Today, Gala's customers range from 11-year-olds asking for gold lipstick to 40-plus women. The older customers opt for trendy but less violent colours. Ruchita Varma, a 30-year-old wedding trousseau designer, chooses vibrant shades "depending on where you are going" and sometimes wears gold lipstick even during the day. Preferred nail polish shades are black, purple and lately, moss green. "I will even wear black lipstick," she says, "if we're going pubbing or something. It adds to a rebellious mood." And marital status no longer translates into sagging flesh, boring salwar kameezes and pink nails. Says make-up artist Cory Walia: "A married woman's outlook on life has changed. They are not 25 and fat but 30 and slim, tanned and glorious. They are much more conscious about image."

Increasingly, women are also accessorising the war paint with other props. Coloured contact lenses are a rage. Lens specialist Jyoti Dave says customers from 14 to 45 are "crazy" about coloured eyes. "They ask for blues, greens and now even violets." At Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000 a pair, lenses are an expensive fashion statement but clients see it as a small investment. Says Dave: "They want their eyes to match their clothes." For those looking for less complicated beauty aids, foreign companies like Lancome and Christian Dior offer hair streaks. Not just browns or blondes -- those won't get you noticed anymore and Malhotra insists they will be out of fashion in a month -- but blues, purples and oranges. These are guaranteed to put you in the spotlight and wash out the morning after.

Not surprisingly, Indian companies are getting into the act. Last October, Tips & Toes introduced the Duo-tone range which offers two shades in one lipstick. So the daring could combine gold with maroon or silver with blue without investing in two lipsticks. Lipstick sales in Mumbai rose by 300 per cent following the launch. Since then the range of 16 combinations has found takers in Bangalore, Pune and Delhi. "Cosmetics colour trends have undergone a perceptible change in the last four or five years," says marketing manager Rajesh Mehta. "Wild and funky options are being liked by the consumer. With the Duo-tone range, there was so much demand in Mumbai that we had to delay launches in other markets."

Also last year, Lakme, with a market share of 60 per cent, introduced the Ultra Lip Art collection, which includes shades like gold, silver and copper. The shades are used to highlight lips and give them definition. The range also allows consumers to mix colours and develop their own unique look. Lakme says the line has been "an instant success". As has Elle 18, a line designed specifically for the young consumer. Elle 18 aims to "reflect the moods of the teenage girl", and along with colours like pinks, mauves and peaches includes shades like blues, greens, blacks and greys. Says Ajay Mehra, general manager, sales, at Lakme: "The wild unconventional shades address particular aspirations and needs among our target audience. Though conventional earthy shades continue to dominate the market, these new shades have come to be very popular."

The new colours reflect the changes in India's urban, upmarket women. Says Mehra: "Over the past few years, the Indian woman has progressed from her traditional outlook and evolved into a more vibrant, confident and independent personality. She is exposed to international media, lifestyles and aspirations. Her exposure to the international fashion industry has made her more conscious of her grooming and appearance and she is willing to experiment with her image to keep up with the trends." As if on cue, the latest issue of Femina has model Sheetal Mallar posing in deep purple lipstick and blue nail polish -- an icon of beauty, independence, vibrancy and assertiveness. A lighter blue shade graces the pages inside.

Walia calls the funk look a "reaction to grunge". "Then everybody had an unwashed look. But now people are celebrating looking good. And fashion internationally is totally unstructured today. Anything goes." Fashion high priestess Meher Castelino seconds him. "There is no definite look. Anybody can wear anything and you'll still be in fashion." Walia points out that new make-up technology also makes rainbow faces easier to paint. "Everything is gel, creams and smear-ons. It's so easy to apply."

Beauty pundits are undecided about whether the colour trend will last. While Walia says bright colours are here to stay, Castelino believes the younger crowd is fickle and will find new fads soon. "These are gimmicks which have come from the West," she says. "The basic bread and butter of pinks and magentas will remain." Besides, not everyone is celebrating green talons. Says fashion guru Hemant Trivedi: "I'm not comfortable with it at all. I prefer beauty in a more classic form. There is, after all, a limit to how far you can go."

Perhaps. But Mumbai's trendy young things aren't interested in limits. "I have to keep up with the latest trends," says Parul. "And this is really in vogue."

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