Put some colour in your cheeks: why blush is all you need right now

It's often sidelined — but it's the key to the glowing, natural look of the summer

- BY ROSE BEER

Sometimes blusher gets sidelined by beauty consumers: After all, a scarlet lipstick makes a louder, smarter, sharper makeup statement.

A glistening eyeshadow gives a more glamorous, glossy look. But I think we've got this wrong. My desert island beauty product would be blusher. And I think yours should be, too.

Because if our eyes are the windows to our soul, it is our cheeks that reveal the truth in our heart. Flushed with love? Desire? Delight? Exuberant? Exhilarated? Afraid? No other body part so openly discloses our feelings. Flushed cheeks are to me vitality, life force and beauty defined.

And I’m not alone. Over the decade that I covered fashion week shows hundreds of them, from London to Paris, New York to Milan - I heard designers in the tiny backstage beauty areas praise the “perfect flush” time and time again. They enlisted the world’s finest makeup artists to recreate perfect iterations on their models, from the radiant blush of first love, to cheeks freckled and ruddy from the sun, or that pinched prettiness that comes with a frosty winter walk.