The confidence-boost from a bit of red

When I was younger, I never had much of a courtship (or even acquaintance) with make-up and, now that I'm an adult, I only wear it maybe once or twice a week. When I do, it's usually just a bit of mascara and - if I'm feeling adventurous - some lipliner and lipstick. If I've got my compact on me, I'll add a bit of translucent powder.

My husband & I are members of the wonderful New Sheridan Club, a vintage-inspired social club, so it's no great surprise that my chosen lipstick is red (my favourite at the moment is Revlon's Matte lipstick and I'm always amused by the fact that my current shade is number 007), and I even occasionally attempt vintage hairstyles, thanks to encouragement and reassurance that they're not impossible given in videos on YouTube by beautiful people like Fleur and Lisa.

Since my hair has started to thin, though, and especially since I've been unable to do practically anything with it (bar wrap it up with a nice scarf), I've been scared of putting my usual hot sticks in and even pincurls seem out-of-bounds, as brushing out a set would probably leave me with hardly any hair at all...! Oddly, however, this limitation of my "beauty regime" to my face seems to have made me more enthusiastic about make-up. It makes sense, really: anything to both distract people from the top of my head and make me feel a little more self-confident.

I've always been amazed at the confidence automatically installed by the wearing of red lipstick. At first, of course, I was absolutely terrified and thought that everyone was looking at me and thinking that I looked like a two-year-old playing with her mum's make-up kit, but now I feel comfortable when I have it on and, more than that, when I do wear it, it lifts my spirits, makes me smile more and makes me feel better about myself.

I always try to be self-aware when it comes to make-up, because I wouldn't like to think that I would ever not be able to not wear make-up, but right now I really appreciate the little brightening effect that that splash of red gives me.