NADINE KAM / NKAM@STARBULLETIN.COM 3C's Chad Hayduk tries matching the color of an orchid, starting with a palette of beeswax pigments. His company creates custom colors for individualistic consumers.

Your signature color
a test tube away

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By Nadine Kam
nkam@starbulletin.com

Back when I was 11, living in a world of powder blue and chartreuse eye shadow and Easter egg yellow nail polish, I longed for metallic makeup such as a silver nail polish with a mirror finish as slick as mercury.

It took the cosmetics industry about 25 years to catch up to my taste for metallics, and even now that I've moved onto other colors and textures in the spectrum, I'm not sure anyone's gotten that silver quite right. Most turn out to be a flat gray stirred with a batch of silver fleck.

An explosion of color over the past few years means today's consumers can have their pick of vampy purples, dark chocolate browns, berry reds and even marshmallow white -- BUT there may be that one that still proves elusive, and these days, you don't have to wait for the cosmetics companies to catch up to your vision.

Enter Chad Hayduk, one of the three principals behind 3C, a New York-based cosmetics company focusing on customized color. He was in Honolulu last week to give a demonstration of color mixing and help customers with their color choices.

NADINE KAM / NKAM@STARBULLETIN.COM Chad Hayduk works on a party look for Cecile Lowrey, who was celebrating her 17th birthday. She wanted a lavender mermaid look for her birthday luau.

3C cosmetics is carried exclusively in Honolulu at McQuaid's Fine Living in Ward Warehouse, and getting a custom lipstick, eye shadow or blush to match your hair, bring out your eyes or accessorize that little red party dress is simply a matter of filling an envelope with a dime-size sample of the color you want and sending it off to Hayduk and his partners -- Trae Bodge and Scott Catto -- in New York.

They'll send back two samples of your customized makeup in three to five business days. The cost is $55, your color is kept on file and reorders are $15.

The process is not limited to individuals. Businesses, fashion designers and salons have turned to 3C for special events. "We have the ability to turn on a dime," Hayduk said. "If you're having a fashion show and need a fuchsia lipstick to match your line, you've got it."

HAYDUK, a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate, worked for Chanel, Origins and Kiehl's and was a lab technician for Visage Beaute, a custom-blending pioneer, in the late '80s. The company eventually folded but his custom work continued.

"3C picks up where Visage left off," he said. "We're able to customize any color, including discontinued colors from the '30s through today."

Included in their files of 5,000 classic colors is one that mimics Revlon's discontinued "Naked Pink." A California woman snatched up 200 tubes of the color so she'll "never have to be out of stock again," said Hayduk.

Although it's hard to imagine anyone in our "in today, out tomorrow" culture actually wanting to wear the same color day in and day out, Hayduk said he's also amazed by the allegiance some women feel toward their "signature" color.

"They figure, 'That color works for me and I want that color.'"

Not all are so tradition-bound, however. Some will send along a fabric swatch to match a particular dress. Others send crayons, leaves or tree bark. And with fashion forecasters predicting a colorful spring -- runways were full of models wearing different colors on each eye -- Hayduk says he's been getting many requests for green lipsticks.

While Visage may have foundered because its ideas were ahead of its time, 3C finds itself in a time when individuality rules and everyone wants to be his or her own brand.

"There are no rules anymore," Hayduk said. "A few years ago, everyone wanted to wear the same things, but now people wear anything they want, and if you want to wear green lipstick, more power to you."

3C's look for spring will be a bit tamer, with neutral eye color accented with a touch of green, paired with lips that are neutral or a soft beigy coral.

3C'S READY-TO-WEAR products are inspired by custom requests and have been featured in InStyle Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, US Weekly and Vogue. Among the Hollywood types who have discovered 3C are Penelope Cruz, Juliette Binoche, Courtney Love and Sofia Coppola, who wanted a lip color, "Doubles," to match a new burgundy-hued sparkling wine from the family's winery. 3C created the warm peach lip gloss Lopez wears in "Maid in Manhattan," as well as Sandra Bullock's lip color in "Two Weeks Notice."

It's nothing like Hayduk's past work in Hollywood. For a few years he worked on special-effects cuts and bruises for horror films, and while he enjoyed creating gory looks, he didn't appreciate the hours. "The makeup people are the first to arrive and the last to leave the set," he said.

A new color introduction due in spring, "Cool Blue Pop," indicates he hasn't left his gory past entirely. "We wanted something new, something exciting," he said. "It'll look like you've gone swimming and you've been in the water too long."

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