There was a push for idiosyncrasy over consistency in Alber Elbaz’s Fall Lanvin offering, which meant one uniform makeup look simply would not have worked here. “It’s strong but individual,” Pat McGrath explained of the—count them—four different faces she sent out onto the runway. “There’s a brow, a lip, a very graphic eye, and a smoky eye,” she pointed out, explaining that Elbaz chose the lips based on specific show looks and then McGrath just “mixed [things] up” after that. That deep, matte, fuchsia-laced sanguine mouth was the standout, though, if anything because it marked yet another appearance of the season’s statement lip, which has been overwhelmingly matte. “It just has been that way. People want that sophistication. And with the skin…” McGrath continued, referencing the similarly powdered complexions that have made dewy finishes look downright outdated. “Fashion’s about extremes,” she surmised.

Varied as it may have been, there was a collective sense of ladylike proportion to Elbaz’s clothes, which he deliberately threw off with chunky necklaces, menswear-inspired flat shoes—and a messy low ponytail “drenched” in shine, according to Guido Palau. “The clothes are quite ornate, so he didn’t want it to look too bourgeois,” Palau elaborated of why he kept strands purposefully easy, as though models had pulled them back themselves and, in the case of Kati Nescher and Suvi Koponen—the show’s opener and closer, respectively—topped them with a festive headpiece. Every girl got a hefty dose of Redken Shine Flash 02 Glistening Mist to create a damp texture before Palau applied a slick of its forthcoming Diamond Oil Shatterproof Shine serum. But he didn’t bother with extensions to achieve one consistent length. “The girls with the short hair are staying short,” he said, motioning to Catherine McNeil, Karlie Kloss, and Saskia de Brauw.

“It feels amazing,” Pat McGrath said when she was asked how she felt to be part of team Lanvin on the eve of Alber Elbaz’ tenth anniversary with the brand, thus summing up the general emotion of everyone who was backstage for the momentous occasion. To properly complement the designer’s collection of rich colors and feminine silhouettes without overpowering it, McGrath added a single graphic detail to the face in the form of a thick, black winged eye. “It’s all about illustration,” she explained, “like a pen-and-ink sketch,” which inspired her to draw on a meticulously pointed flick that extended up through the crease of models’ eyes and out toward the temple. Using a small angled brush dipped in a black cream eye shadow, McGrath drew another “smudged” stroke very close to the lower lash line to further define the eye against a clean, natural base that boasted highlights down the bridge of the nose and on the cupid’s bow of the lips. “It’s almost like an insignia,” she said of the stark liner, a stamped-on badge of honor for every girl that can say she walked this runway.

Guido Palau took a similarly subdued approach when conceiving the show’s hair look, opting for simplicity over elaborate structure. Shampooing all 43 girls with either Redken’s All-Soft Gentle Cleansing Shampoo or its Extreme Shampoo and taking the weight out of the back of the head by braiding an under section and pinning it to the scalp, Palau coated lengths with Redken Extreme Anti-Snap Protective Treatment to help ensure smooth strands as he employed a light blow-dry—”just to clean the hairline up.” As a finishing touch, he tucked the front pieces behind models’ ears for a slight bend. “The ease of it is the beauty,” he surmised.