Beauty guru’s tips help cancer patients look good, feel good

Beauty guru’s tips help cancer patients look good, feel good [...] says Tim Quinn, a stockbroker turned internationally renowned makeup artist who spent Saturday, the first day of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, behind the Giorgio Armani Beauty counter at Saks Fifth Avenue on Union Square, giving makeovers and providing beauty tips for people with cancer. Quinn, who beat testicular cancer in 2007 and is a cancer research advocate for several groups, also shared how something as superficial as bronzer gave his psyche — and his mood — a boost while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. “It doesn’t hurt to help them look their best,” said Quinn, who has worked backstage at fashion weeks in New York, Paris and Milan, at the Academy Awards and on luminaries from Jill Biden to January Jones. [...] the event also drew Lizabeth Light, an oncology nurse at California Pacific Medical Center, who was trying on a new makeup palette for her upcoming wedding, and who agreed with Quinn’s assessment. “The drugs patients take can affect the skin, from dryness to rash to irritations,” Light said. Wheatley — who also happens to be an oncology nurse — agreed that patients can benefit from a bit of pampering, whether a makeover, a hand massage or a hug. In the hospital, where he was placed in a unit with other male patients, “You’d see the same guys, and we were really not doing well, and they’d ask me, ‘How come your skin looks so good?’” he recalled. Quinn took to bringing cosmetic gift bags for other patients and nurses, and later became active working with Look Good Feel Better and the American Cancer Society.