Good cosmetics is, above all, an art of respect: it does not disfigure or daub; it does not turn a face into a caricature of itself nor force it to appear what it is not. Good cosmetics preserves the previous physiognomy, recognizes it, cares for it, preserves it, pampers it, in continuity, without deception, without denying today what there was yesterday.
The great cosmetic houses know this well: a serious firm that makes its name a guarantee does not seek to annul the face, but to accompany and respect it; it does not promise a new face, but a face faithful to itself, ennobled by the passage of time; it does not want to impose a different face, but to ensure that the same person remains recognizable and attractive. If cosmetics forgets this principle, if it obsesses over novelty or immediate impact, the result is grotesque: artificial shine, aggressive stripping, unnecessary volume, frozen expression, stucco tightness, cardboard coldness.
This principle, so evident in front of the mirror, is applicable to multi-secular, imperishable faces, immortal, eternal works of art, where not only sensory appearance is at stake, but the trembling transmission of a sacred heritage. There too there is room for care and cleaning, for reform understood in its noblest sense, but always with a fundamental condition: not to erase the received features, not to discredit the past to justify the present, not to rewrite history as if it were a defective face that needs to be corrected.
Cosmetics that does not respect, but disguises and replaces, reinterpreting until making the inherited unrecognizable, presents itself with technical and polished language, with academic apparatus and promises of freshness and efficacy, but leaves the strange sensation that the face no longer speaks for itself, because it needs to be explained! In the face of that, the good cosmetic houses, those of prestige and tradition, guarantee their product with the use of several generations: through different climates, and on very diverse skins, it continues to give results. Not because that product is old, just like that, but because it has known how to respect the nature of what it cares for.
The traditional Mass belongs to this category: it is not an object of nostalgia, but a living form, recognizable, deeply divine and human (in that order) and essentially mysterious; a theological aesthetic so full of accumulated holiness that it does not need to be made up to be suggestive and perpetually fruitful.
A characteristic of bad cosmetics is its tendency to insist. However, when the product acts in depth, arguments and debates, explanations and congresses are superfluous, and, of course, numbers and statistics… with the prior decision to impose one’s own brand, regardless of the survey results, which will also be made up to suit. Because figures too admit make-up: concealer is applied to them, light is played with, the most favorable angle is chosen. They can even be hidden behind a layer of radiant varnish or falsified, covering them with shiny whitewash. But the enamel, no matter how varnished, does not withstand the weather, and the plaster cracks over time. They only last until someone spots and investigates and, upon discovering that the tone is not natural, aims from the Montagna and hits the Diane…
Truth – in short, the Geltast – does not need artificial touch-ups to be beautiful. Von Balthasar diagnosed the modern crisis as the separation between truth and beauty. And if truth without beauty becomes cold, ideological or violent, beauty without truth becomes empty, sentimental, deceptive. Therefore, whoever does not perceive beauty does not understand truth. Faith educates the spiritual senses of the believer who has been wounded by the beauty of Christ. And holiness is then the transparency of the Geltast, the form of Christ in man’s life.
Tradition —not a museum, but transmitted life— does not ask to be reformulated, but received: its strength is not in competing with the new, but in ensuring the continuity of the permanent youth of the beloved face, full of lines that do not disfigure it, because they tell its story of glory and cross.
To reform is not to falsify or erase, imposing a foreign physiognomy: when care becomes ideological surgery and cosmetics ceases to be respectful and reliable, the result does not rejuvenate, it disfigures.
In the end, the signature of a veteran brand counts. With those from yesterday afternoon… be careful!: they may have no qualms about betraying a venerable face, whose beauty they may try to hide under a patina color Viola. This is well known by the prestigious cosmetic house Roche. Or it should.
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