Sweet 17
5 minute read
I can remember standing in front of the display, my eyes searching the products and stopping at the most beautiful pink eyeshadow I had ever seen. My hands were in my pockets, rolling the coins around, ready to make my first solo makeup purchase and I wanted to get it right.
Whatever I bought that day would be worn on Friday night; a declaration of my transition from girl who wore jeans and her school shoes to the youth club disco and laughed in the corner when Roxette came on for the slow set, to 15-year-old makeup-wearing vixen, ready to take the school disco and the local boys by storm (but probably still hide in the corner and laugh at the slow set).
The pink eyeshadow was by 17, a makeup brand that was an entire generation’s introduction to the power of beauty. It was discontinued in 2018, but Boots has just announced that the iconic brand is coming back with a new look and 170 products, all under €5.
With the announcement, came a rush of nostalgia so strong I was unable to think of anything but 1995 for about three days.
Everyone gives out about the homogenisation of teenagers these days, but in the late 90s every young woman between 15 and 22 smelled exactly the same.
It was a careful layering of scents from the Body Shop, the supermarket, and the present your aunt gave you every single Christmas. Sit back, relax and come with me on a trip down a makeup memory lane. Siri, play Lovefool by The Cardigans.
In the 90s when you started wearing makeup you either had a pan stick by Max Factor, a compact by Constance Carroll or a liquid foundation by Rimmel that had the chalky, slightly pink look of Calamine Lotion.
The preferred method of application was with one’s fingers, and the goal was to completely eradicate all facial features so that you could draw them back in with wholly unsuitable products.
There were about four shades to choose from, until MAC arrived with it’s complicated NCs, and so you took a shot in the dark and were taught to apply your foundation right down to your bra so that there would be no dreaded chin line.
You then compounded the strange colour choice by getting the most enormous bronzing brush you could find and swirling it in a giant saucepan lid of bronzer. You swept this absolutely everywhere, especially, and inexplicably, into your hairline. It often contained glitter and so, as a result, many young women would end up looking like a large, bronzed monument. I personally didn’t like the muddy look and preferred a very pale foundation, so I looked like a ghost with myxomatosis (from the pink eyeshadow) for about six years.
When your makeup was finished you chose your scent. Or more likely scents. Impulse was a base layer, naturally. Then you chose either White Musk or Dewberry. They were the only two perfumes worth talking about.
Sure, some people had Exclamation! and some had SO…? but in the mid-90s your perfume, your shampoo and your morals all came from The Body Shop.
This was before Boots came to Ireland. In fact, access to a Boots store, before the first was opened in Dublin in 1996, was the coolest thing possible.
In 1994 we managed to convince a group of teachers to bring us on a “school tour” to Holyhead for the day. We ran amok on the boat, ransacked Boots and ordered pints of Strongbow in a dockers pub. It was the best fun and the most bizarre trip ever. It left me with about a dozen screw-together, stackable lip balms and a fear of peach schnapps that lasts to this day.
For many years I wondered if the teachers were completely irresponsible or alcoholics and then, when I hit 40, I realised that they were probably just completely crushed by the boredom of everyday life and desperate to do something – anything – different, even if that meant dragging four 16-year-olds out of a vomit-covered ball pit on a very grim ferry.
The final layer of your signature scent was reserved for big days out or monthly discos and meant taking out the coffret of perfumes that you got for Christmas and choosing between Anais Anais, Tresor or Paloma Picasso.
Your perfume collection took pride of place on your dressing table beside your Pierrot clown and a disembodied hand that held your jewellery.
If you were lucky enough to go on foreign holidays or have a Spanish student come to stay you might also have a gallon bottle of Nenuco Cologne and as such have a whiff of the exotic off you.
Finally, it was time to do our hair. A lot of us – too many of us – spent hours spraying Sun-In into two strands and scalding the heads off ourselves with the hairdryer desperately trying to get it to activate. If you were really brave you died your hair, and hands, with a Wella Shader that would never, ever wash out. Plum is a very unforgiving colour for the mousy haired to slowly grow down.
With hair straighteners still only a glint in James Dyson’s eye, you would style your hair into either a) a very tight ponytail with two straggly pieces hanging in front of your face, b) with an aggressively hair sprayed bump held together with 87 clips, or c) au naturel, which basically meant sort of frizzy.
Then, with a swipe of Heather Shimmer you’d put on your Buffalos, grab your pop swatch and head off to meet your friends in a prearranged spot with no means of communication. They were truly great times.
Jennifer Stevens, February 2022
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