Millie Kendall OBE Takes Us Inside Her Makeup Bag

Millie Kendall OBE is one of Britain’s leading voices when it comes to beauty. With over 30 years’ of industry experience under her belt – during which she has created and co-founded multiple beauty brands, and set up the British Beauty Council – it’s safe to say she knows a thing or two (or 200) about makeup.

And when it comes to her own beauty routine, she knows exactly what she’s looking for. ‘I don’t like things to be perfect, I like it to feel like it’s lived in,’ she tells C&TH. ‘For me, beauty is more really for my self confidence rather than perfecting how I look. A little makeup might make me look a bit better, but it’s not going to change how I look. I’m not using it for that purpose.’ 

Below, Millie Kendall OBE takes us through her makeup bag, what a £100 mascara looks (and feels) like and the valuable lesson her grandmother taught her about skincare.

What’s Inside My Makeup Bag? With Millie Kendall OBE

Let’s start with the bag itself – describe it for us.

I have two. I have one that goes in my handbag, a red 19/99 makeup bag that’s really my everyday go-to, and a slightly bigger bag for events. The bigger one is from Jillian Dempsey, and it’s amazing because it’s built like the TARDIS – you could literally fit a small animal in this bag. 

What’s your pre‑makeup beauty ritual?

I grew up watching my grandmother get ready at a dressing table, so I’ve always seen this as the space where you perform your beauty routine. I don’t really do my skincare or makeup in the bathroom. For me, the bathroom is a place that you make yourself clean and you get washed. I don’t feel like it’s a place where you get ready. So, I sit down at my dressing table, and I usually have a podcast on and cup of tea within reach.

From there, I just cream my whole body basically. I’ve got quite dry skin, so I do each stage of the skincare prep quite slowly to let everything sink in. I would use some kind of hydrating lotion, a spray, a serum and a moisturiser – and I decide exactly what those three things are depending on how my skin feels. 

I then just let it settle for a bit, maybe for half an hour. During that time I’ll have a look at my schedule, figure out what my day’s going to look like. It’s also my happy space, something like meditation. It lets me be present. It’s the one time of my day where I actually take my time, and I’m not running around like a lunatic.

 

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Let’s break down your makeup routine – prep?

My skin needs to be really well moisturised. I’ve been using Reome’s new moisturiser, and I think it’s brilliant. I’m a huge fan of Reome (I think their cleanser is probably my favourite cleanser of all time). I’ll also use the Pure Rose Hydrosol Spray by Subtle Energies, and a Niacinamide serum from Teresa Tarmey. I try to keep it quite simple – I’m not a huge user of actives. Maybe every now and again, I’ll try something. 

I can tell by touch whether my skin’s ready for makeup; it has to feel slightly plump and moist. There’s nothing worse than putting makeup on and your skin’s feeling a bit dry. It just doesn’t go on well when it’s like that. So I look for that slightly plump moistness.

Face? 

As you get older, your makeup gets less heavy; you just don’t wear as much. So I go for products that really have that heaviness to them. A concealer I’m loving at the moment, for example, is ILIA’s True Skin Serum Concealer. I think it’s absolutely brilliant. 

In terms of foundation, I use either Chanel Les Beige or a tinted moisturiser from Jones Road. I don’t really need a very heavy foundation, just something light like this is enough.

I also like to use quite a bouncy, peachy kind of blush. I’ve been using the same Charlotte Tilbury palette for absolutely ever, the Instant Look In A Palette in Stoned Rose Beauty. It’s sort of its way out – some of the pigments are gone – but I’m making my way through the shades I think work best for me. I also like Bobbi Brown’s Pot Rouge in Pale Pink; it’s really pretty and youthful. And when you get to my age, you need something that’s a bit more youthful. So pinks and peaches and nothing too dramatic, because I think it just makes you look really old. This is why I also apply my blush quite frontally, I don’t do that thing where you drag it up the contour of your cheek.

Tools and brushes?

I really like a slightly angled foundation brush, something that has that sort of sharp oblique angle on it. ILIA Beauty has some really lovely, soft brushes that blend out really well.

 

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Eyebrows? 

You know, a lot of people my age have either plucked their eyebrows to death or the hairs are falling out – which does weirdly happen when you get older. My eyebrows are regularly groomed and dyed by Shavata Singh, so generally they’re quite good without anything on. 

But when I hit a certain window – usually it’s a couple of weeks before I go back to get them done – I need a pencil to fill them in. I much prefer a pencil to a powder. There’s two pencils I use at the moment. One is the Shu Uemura Hard Formula Eyebrow Pencil in Seal Brown. It’s a very long pencil, but mine’s getting shorter and shorter and I’m worried I’ll never be able to replace it.

The other is from 19/99. The brand does a really good Graphite Brow Pencil, and I go for the shade Light. It’s quite firm, so you can create what looks like hair. 

Eyes?

I’ll usually just go for an eyeliner. And normally I put it on my waterline, up above and down below. I go between Charlotte Tilbury and 19/99. I also love Victoria Beckham’s green eye pencil, and Jillian Demspey has this one eyeliner called Chimpy, and it’s the most beautiful turquoise.

So sometimes I’ll go out on a limb and I’ll just put loads of blue eyeliner on. I do like that slightly rock and roll, lived in look anyway, so I kind of just go with the flow – and if it’s a bit imperfect, so what, who cares? I’m not correcting my face with makeup. I’m just trying to make it look a little bit brighter. If everything’s a bit smudged or a bit messy, I don’t really care.

But I never wear mascara. I’m a big fan of coloured mascara – so if I was to wear a mascara, it’d be blue or green or purple or something crazy like that, because I love a bit of colour around my eye. But I started getting blepharitis, and I couldn’t get rid of it until I stopped wearing mascara. I’ve not worn it since, and I don’t really miss it. 

Lips? 

Lip masks are something I really like using at the moment. I actually grab a vanilla lip mask from Trader Joe’s whenever I’m in the US – it’s like $5 and it’s so good. I can use that as moisturiser all day long. 

Every now and again I’ll wear a red lipstick. I like Rouge Dior lipstick with a velvet finish – it’s the perfect red and it just stays on forever. You can’t beat a good quality red lipstick. The other one I really like is from Vieve. 

 

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Finishing touches? 

Setting powder. I always use Shu Uemura’s loose powder. I’ll never use anything else, because it’s just absolutely the best loose powder. I think powder is the key to good makeup. I don’t really quite get the setting spray thing.

Which item instantly makes you feel made up?

Eyeliner. I think it just makes me look a little bit messy and not overly groomed. It just feels a bit naughty – eyeliner is really sexy, and I think it kind of makes me feel a little bit lived-in, kind of like I’ve been out all night. Like I have a life. I just think that look is great.

One item(s) always in your handbag?

I’ve always got some sort of lip balm. I talk a lot, so I need to constantly have lip balm on my lips. I can’t have dry lips. So always, always, always have a lip balm.

The most expensive item in your makeup bag?

I did once buy a £100 mascara from Hourglass. I was fascinated with the fact that it’s not a brush, it’s just a gold wand. No brush – just the ink, and you sort of comb it gently onto your lashes. I was actually with Alex Forbes, who is the Managing Director at Skin Rocks, and we were in Liberty at the time. We were both obsessing over it, and I was the idiot that bought it. And I say ‘idiot’ because it was £100, but it is actually really brilliant.

And the most luxurious? 

I think any lipstick really is quite a luxury. It’s that one thing I put on and it feels extra special. Wearing lipstick almost has that sort of French thing where you kind of all of a sudden feel a little bit chic.

What about the hero product you can’t live without, and have used for years?

I would say again, it’s loose powder. I vary what brands I use for other products, either depending on how I feel or where I’m going – or if I run out of something, I’ll try something new. So I’m quite experimental. 

But with the powder, I don’t think I’ve ever swapped it for another brand. I’ve used it for 30 years, and I don’t see any reason to change it now. It’s also basically a bottomless pit. The most amazing value for money ever.

What’s a beauty trend that you’re loving right now?

I do quite like, weirdly, the idea of using lip tint as a liner. You put the tint on the outside of the lip and then peel it off so that you have a darker flush. I quite like that. We used to call it the J Lo. I don’t know what it’s called nowadays, but she was the one that used to wear a dark lip liner back then.

And one you’re glad to see the back of? 

I’m glad that eyebrows are less sticky-uppy now. I found that very glued, stuck-up look really weird.

 

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Is there someone in the industry whose work you’re really loving at the moment? 

Emily Wood – she’s an MUA, but most people might know her as Aimee Lou Wood’s sister. She’s really cool. She’ll take a pencil and find a way to use it all over the face, which is brilliant, because it shows a different use of a really well-known product. And I think that anything like that is great.

What’s something you did beauty-wise in your youth that you’d never do again?

Oh, I slept in eyelashes all the time. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’d wake up in the morning and I couldn’t open my eyes. They’d be stuck together. I was married at the time as well, and they’d get stuck on my partner in the middle of the night. The good old days of eyelash glue. 

The best piece of beauty advice you’ve been given?

I think, rather than being given advice, I’ve been able to take things in by watching. I’ve been able to pick up tips and tricks by watching my grandmother, my best friend in the beauty world Ruby [Hammer] and makeup artists when I’ve had my makeup done at work or for events. 

I think watching my grandmother get ready in the morning taught me a lot about moisturising the skin. I don’t remember her wearing a huge amount of makeup, but she was very much into the skin thing. And I think that I’ve benefited from having good skin, which is probably partly genetics, but partly because my grandmother was a real advocate for clean, moisturised skin. 

I think it’s also important to understand that we spend a lot of time looking at a flat screen with our image on it – but no one sees you like that. People see from the side, from behind, from above, from below, wherever they are. Make sure that you’re conscious of that, because I often see people still with the line of demarcation, because they’re just looking at themselves head-on. They have no idea that from the side that doesn’t look well blended. So I think just to take yourself off a flat screen and just imagine what it’s like to sort of somebody looking at you from 360 degrees.

What’s your beauty philosophy?

Looking messy is a bit chic. I don’t like things to be perfect, I like it to feel like it’s lived in. For me, beauty is more really for my self confidence rather than perfecting how I look. A little makeup might make me look a bit better, but it’s not going to change how I look. I’m not using it for that purpose. 

Makeup: touch‑up tool or self‑expression?

I think it’s really amazing in terms of empowerment. I mean, if you go back and look at the history of makeup – Lisa Eldridge has an amazing show on the BBC called Makeup: A Glamorous History, and Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein have their brilliant book War Paint – and think back to how warriors put on makeup, you can see that it was part of a bigger ritual to feel empowered.

Whether you wear it heavily or lightly, you are getting into character and preparing yourself for the day. That’s why I like that whole routine around it, because it’s my prep. And sometimes I wear more, and sometimes I don’t wear that much at all. But generally speaking, I think it is about empowerment, self-expression and how you want to present yourself to the world. It’s a creative medium – and it’s one of the most amazing creative mediums we have in our industry. 

 

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Anything else we should know?

British Beauty Week is around the corner. It’s really a great time for us all to engage with brands and retailers just before Christmas, and just to really enjoy the beauty industry for what it delivers. It’s an amazing industry that has economic, cultural and social relevance – everyone that puts makeup on their face will know how great it makes them feel – and we’re just celebrating that.

More From Millie

You can keep up with Millie Kendall OBE (and her makeup bag favourites) at milliekendall.com