47 posts tagged "CoverGirl"
Backstage At Valentino, You Can Never Have Too Much Of A Good Thing
By all accounts, Valentino’s Spring collection was wildly successful; take a look at any red carpet from the last year for proof. And not only is young Hollywood clamoring to wear Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri’s beautiful dresses, they are duplicating the season’s corresponding runway hair and makeup, too. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” Guido Palau said of the phenomenon that saw his braid coronet from last October get its turn in the bright lights of the paparazzi flashbulbs. “It’s wearable hair,” he explained of the style’s appeal and the general direction he’s been taking things here.
Palau has another winner on his hands for Fall. “They’ve developed a sort of staple for their girl,” the Redken creative consultant explained of the design duo, throwing out adjectives like “beautiful,” “natural,” and “romantic” to describe their aesthetic. Citing the seventies as inspiration, Palau prepped hair with Redken Full Frame 07 Protective Volumizing Mousse to give it a little guts before he applied heat and crafted a precise middle part. Then, coating his hands with Redken Outshine 01 Anti-Frizz Polishing Milk, he created interlocking twists from the ears around the side of the head, pinning as he went, before joining both sides in a V-shape at the nape of the neck.
Pat McGrath revisited her successful handiwork from last season as well, concentrating her “pastel face-contouring” experiment to the eyes this time around. “It’s modern, iconic beauty,” she said, weaving a halo of “lots of grays, mauves, and a little bit of lilac” across lids, dragging it softly underneath the lower lash line for a subtle wash of color. “It’s a modern Penelope Tree or Anjelica Huston,” she suggested of the effect, building up top and bottom lashes sixties-style with CoverGirl LashBlast 24-Hour Mascara in black, and filling in brows a bit so they looked well-groomed. A touch of highlighter on the Cupid’s bow of lips added to the ethereal,”serene” quality she was after. Look out for the combination on the wire in the next few months, as any number of the folksy frocks from this collection are all but guaranteed to hit the 2012 premiere circuit.
Stella’s Blue Period, Still Going Strong For Fall
“Designers design for who they are or who they want to be,” Eugene Souleiman proposed backstage at Stella McCartney this morning, and McCartney—the woman, the designer, the mother, the daughter of Paul and Linda—is just plain cool. “She’s cool, so I think the girls in her show should be cool,” according to the Wella global creative director, who used a good helping of the brand’s Ocean Spritz Beach Texture Spray to create a matte-finish chignon for Fall. “It’s very neat and clean in the back—a ladylike bun that’s really groomed,” he said of the updo, using adjectives we’ve heard many times at this show in seasons past. “But the front is more raw and a little younger,” he continued, mussing baby hairs to create a halo of light wisps at the root.
Pat McGrath added an injection of youth to the makeup as well, reprising the cobalt blue cat-eye McCartney asked for at her pre-fall show back in January, in tinted eyelash form. “It’s all about the subtle details,” McGrath said of the chunky blue gel—a specific hue that had its origins in the collection—which she coated onto a base of CoverGirl 24-Hour LashBlast Mascara in Black along both the upper and lower lash lines. Keeping skin natural with targeted applications of powder and highlighter, which team McGrath affectionately calls “shiny stick,” the face painter groomed brows and kept lips neutral and well moisturized. “Stella said to me, ‘I just love a girl with color on her lashes,’ ” McGrath said of the bold accent’s inception. Now we do, too.
“Insectlike Eyes” And Naomi Campbell, Backstage At Roberto Cavalli
Amid the usual backstage hustle and bustle today at Roberto Cavalli, there was a large, gray cubicle erected right in the middle of the hair and makeup area. “Naomi Campbell’s in there,” word came as models whizzed back and forth past a rather large security guard on patrol. Every once in a while, the door would open, revealing a glimpse of Campbell, Mr. Cavalli, and a few well-appointed pieces of animal-print furniture (obviously).
“She called me in the middle of the week to ask me what the hair was,” Guido Palau said of Campbell, who he has coiffed for the better part of 20 years. And the supermodel must have approved, as she got the same long, slightly texturized strands as everyone else. “She’s Naomi, so she’s going to be special, but she’s still got to feel part of the show,” the Redken creative consultant explained, giving the rest of the girls similar waist-grazing extensions that he middle-parted and spritzed with water and Redken Nature’s Rescue Radiant Sea Spray for a matte finish and a slight bend. “We’re trying to offset the glamor, not pump it up,” Palau pointed out, referencing the simply styled “extreme length” that he used to balance out Cavalli’s over-the-top collection.
Stealing a second with Pat McGrath before she slipped back into Campbell’s on-site suite, the makeup artist spoke of peacock- and insectlike irridesence—pops of shimmering blue, green, and gold pigment that she blended into a series of black smoky eyes rooted into a smudged application of CoverGirl’s LiquiLine Blast Eyeliner. “You need to tailor the look to each girl,” she explained of her technique—regular and supermodel alike.
Rock Chicks Revisited, Backstage at Versace
After a few seasons of dewy skin with warm, highlighted contours, Donatella Versace and her longtime makeup collaborator, Pat McGrath, revisited a part of the house of Versace’s original DNA to create “a really kind of cool rock ‘n’ roll girl,” according to McGrath—requisite smoky eyes included. “It’s all levels of black,” the face painter emphasized, from the unattached strokes of obsidian CoverGirl LiquiLine Blast topped with its SmokyShadow Blast in Onyx Smoke that rimmed the upper and lower lash lines to its Eye Enhancers 1-Kit Shadow in Shimmering Onyx with a hint of gold sparkle that McGrath dusted across lids in a soft winged shape through the socket. “We just want the girls to look more cool,” she reiterated, re-bleaching brows and then adding cream, complexion-enhancing colors through individual hairs so they looked “toned,” rather than blocked out. The idea, McGrath continued, was to do a smoky eye of today—something modern and graphic that bore no resemblance to “reality TV black liner.”
Working off a similar “super-cool, super-modern” directive, Guido Palau dipped into his kit and produced a series of fake bangs. “The whole thing is a lot less blown-out than we’re used to seeing here,” he said, coating strands with Redken Wool Shake 08 Gel-Slush Texturizer and its new Powder Refresh 01 Aerosol Hair Powder/Dry Shampoo to add a lived-in, slick bend to the hair. Even the short, Rooney Mara-esque fringe was left texturized rather than perfectly straight, smoothed down by another of Palau’s Fall kit essentials: a series of gray and black No-Crease Bow Clips from Ricky’s NYC. “They don’t mark the hair,” he explained of the stylist tools that have traveled with him from New York to Milan.
Seeing Spots, Backstage At Anna Sui
Black cat-eyes may have dominated the Spring runways, but for Fall, they’ve gone Technicolor. Already turning up in red, orange, and chartreuse incarnations this week in New York, Pat McGrath added azure to the mix backstage at Anna Sui, where she whipped up theatrical blue wings. “There’s beautiful upholstery fabrics in the collection,” the CoverGirl global creative design director explained of the color’s origin, crafting a “fat” liquid line along models’ upper lash line with an upward flick on the end. “You draw your shape, fill it in, and add your shadow,” McGrath said, demoing the process on the back of her hand with CoverGirl Liquiline Blast Eyeliner in Blue Boom and its Eye Enhancers 1-Kit Shadow in Indigo Impact. Tracing inner rims with a white pencil to open the eye, McGrath added a few coats of CoverGirl LashPerfection mascara for a dramatic sixties feel. “It’s my favorite,” the face painter said of the slim tube. As a finishing touch, she flexed her 3-D makeup muscle, as she was wont to do last season, and placed hand-colored, hand-cut circular stickers below the lower lash line. “It adds a little extra interest,” she said of the detail, which was lined up exactly with models’ pupils. Nails were painted a similar shade of blue courtesy of Anna Sui’s own lacquer in #103.
Picking up on the sixties vibe that is part-and-parcel to almost everything Sui does, Garren sculpted a side-parted low ponytail that he teased at the crown. “It’s kind of Adele,” Sui’s longtime coiffing collaborator said of the style that was prepped with Rene Furterer Volumino, heavily back-combed, and finished with a halo of L’Oréal Paris Elnett Satin Hairspray. “[When it comes to hair spray], there’s only Elnett,” the super stylist said of the classic gold aerosol can.