56 posts tagged "Dolce & Gabbana"
Bianca Balti: Light Blue Beach Babe
One whiff of Dolce & Gabbana’s iconic Light Blue fragrance, and it’s easy to see why the Sicilian-citron, Granny Smith-apple, jasmine, bamboo, amber, and musk eau has remained a best seller for twelve years. The scent is lighthearted, boasting a certain effervescence that allows it to be unobtrusive while still making a lasting impression. “When you smell it, you smell summer,” says Bianca Balti, the latest face of the iconic scent, whose Mario Testino-lensed ads, shot in Capri, just started to appear in glossies worldwide. A first for Balti—a season-spanning favorite of the Italian design duo who has fronted a number of their fashion campaigns but never a fragrance—the images feature her golden limbs alongside those of male model extraordinaire David Gandy as the two lounge around the Mediterranean island. Here, the model reveals how she wears her Light Blue, as well as summer hair remedies to live by.
How does this scent embody the spirit of the Mediterranean climes featured in its ad campaign?
It’s not because of the campaign or the TV ad that we think about the Mediterranean with this fragrance. When you smell it, it’s really citrusy—lemon. When you smell it, you smell summer. Then comes the Capri sentiment. If I have to think about a woman who wears it, it’s more of a teenager. It’s like the excitement of holidays from school. It’s fresh and bubbly, like the flirtation when you’re a teenager, and you fall so much in love for a week with a guy you meet when you’re on vacation with your parents, and then you never see that guy again! It’s so strong, but fresh. There are not very similar fragrances. It suits you better in summer, but if you put it on with gray skies, then you feel a little bit of summer, too.
Are your summers, as I imagine them based on these ad images, all bronzed limbs, beautiful beaches, and gorgeous white bikinis?
I’m Italian. I go to the beach. I put SPF 50 on, but I get tan anyway. You need to keep your skin safe, but you know, my whole routine is under the sun, diving in the water, under the sun, diving in the water…
Where does fragrance factor in? Where do you apply it—and when?
[I apply it] everywhere. After I get out of the shower, I put on the perfume, and then after, when I get dressed, when I go to the mirror to check [myself] out. I spray it and walk through it so it gets on my clothes and in my hair—just in case. My bag is usually already really heavy, so if I take the perfume, it’s too much. That’s why I put a lot on in the morning.
What are your other big beauty indulgences?
When I lived in New York, I got a manicure and pedicure twice a week—I loved it. I relaxed, I read magazines. Even if I didn’t need it, I loved it. In Italy, it’s different. You don’t have that kind of walk-in process.
What about makeup? Do you never leave the house without foundation, mascara, et cetera?
Working so much, I don’t put so much makeup on myself. I go with no makeup to shoots, and then when I take a shower, I moisturize my skin, and I do a hair mask. My hair gets very much stressed-out, and that stresses me out. I’m really obsessed with my hair. I feel like I had twice the amount of hair that I have now before I started modeling.
What kind of mask do you use?
I put a lot of oil [on]—whenever I fly, even through the night—and wash it out the morning after. If I don’t work for three days, I keep it in for three days, comb it, and put my hair in a chignon. It just looks really clean. On flights it’s great because it’s so dry. I try to keep my hair moist, and the more it’s moist, the less I have split ends. I started with the Argan oil when I went to Morocco. That’s when it all started. But sometimes it’s hard to wash it out, so I use the L’Oréal [Elvive] Extraordinary Oil. It absorbs very fast, so it doesn’t dirty the pillow—and it washes out very easily.
EXCLUSIVE: Lights! Camera! Pat McGrath!
For those of you who follow team Style.com on Instagram (we’re @styledotcomnicole, @styledotcommarina, @styledotcommatthew, and @styledotcomcelia, for those of you who don’t), you’ll have noticed an uptick in posts as we wade our way through the Fall collections from New York to Paris. As far as beauty photos go, none has garnered more attention than the casual snap we published from backstage at Dolce & Gabbana—which is presumably because it was one of only a handful of Instagrams that pictured the handiwork of one Pat McGrath. For the Italian house’s Fall show, the famed makeup artist and creative adviser of Dolce & Gabbana The Makeup channeled classic Italian glamour and a touch of Sophia Loren with an exceptionally gorgeous matte crimson mouth, beautiful brows, and perfectly drawn black cat-eyes. Here, in a Style.com exclusive, she explains the ins and outs of the application, and why this is a look that even the most lipstick-phobic beauty fiend can 100 percent pull off.
Dolce & Gabbana’s Wafts Of Desire
Everything Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce create oozes with sex appeal. Just look at their Fall collection and their stable of spokesmodels. Never much fans of waifish androgyny, the design duo reliably selects women with curves—Scarlett, Monica, Laeticia, and, most recently, Bianca Balti—to hawk everything from clothes and accessories to makeup and fragrance. Their latest beauty offering isn’t as much about sex, however, as it is about desire. “Everything starts with desire. There wouldn’t be seduction, sensuality, or passion if it wasn’t for desire,” Gabbana says of the new scent of the same name, which he was heavily involved in conceptualizing (it’s Gabbana’s hand-scrawled signature that graces the front of the matte black bottle). “He says what desire means to him, and we create accords,” explains Will Andrews, Dolce & Gabbana fragrance expert, which in this case led Andrews right to tuberose. “Tuberose is a close smell. It’s very present, rich, and it has an unusual hypnotic quality to it—you must let it take over,” he elaborates of the often eroticized white flower that is tempered by jasmine and sweet plum nectar here. “[Desire] is not about sex—it’s a studied flirtation,” Andrews contends, which lead him to give the scent a “sophisticated sensuality” bolstered by fresh, sweet top notes like mandarin, lychee, and bergamot to lighten things up. Further rounding out the aroma is a base of sandalwood and musk, also used here to “prevent [the tuberose] from taking over,” according to Andrews, and a gourmand note of vanilla-infused caramel that just so happens to have an irresistible magnetism about it—much like look sixty-two from the house’s new line. When wearing both, proceed with caution.
Sophia Loren And A “Crowning” Achievement In Beauty, Backstage At Dolce & Gabbana
There are few designers who are as unwaveringly loyal to their core house codes as Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, and like clockwork, their twist on classic Italian glamour was very much on view for Fall. “They don’t need to reinvent [their woman] every season, because they really understand how a woman likes to look,” Guido Palau said backstage. “They bring back all the little tricks to beauty that in years gone by we’ve thrown away,” he continued, working on a slightly deconstructed updo.
“It’s all things that really flatter,” Palau explained of the style’s subtleties while prepping hair with Redken Guts 10 Volume Spray Foam mousse and its Quick Tease 15 Backcombing Finishing Spray, which he spritzed onto the crown before adding a bit of height. Creating deliberately short center parts, Palau gathered two front sections that he crisscrossed in the back of the head as he swept up lengths into something of a free-form twist-turned-chignon. “It’s as if they did it themselves,” he suggested of the look, which was kept deliberately flat to create a specific silhouette. “If you have volume up top and with the bun, they fight each other,” Palau pointed out, affixing eighteen bejeweled, Byzantine-inspired crowns to the heads of select models, including Kate King, Bette Franke, Karlie Kloss, and Jasmine Tookes.
Pat McGrath got the same brief as Palau—which included nods to the gilded mosaic tiles in Sicily’s Cathedral of Monreale that were reproduced on a series of dresses—as well as the mention of Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana’s “favorite” actress, Sophia Loren. The beauty icon’s face was pinned up all over the makeup area, her signature crimson lips and black cat-eye serving as the ultimate inspiration for McGrath’s own interpretation of the classic combo. “It’s quite different because there’s no highlight, no hint of blush, no contour, but it’s still very effective,” the makeup artist explained of complexions that were kept purposefully powdered and velvety with Dolce & Gabbana’s new Perfect Matte Liquid Foundation, rather than kissed with hints of pink and apricot blush, as is often customary here. Coating the inner rims of eyes with its Crayon Intense Eyeliner in Black, before drawing on thick flicks with its liquid Glam Liner in Black Intense, McGrath treated lashes to multiple swipes of Dolce & Gabbana Intenseyes Mascara in Black. Then she started in on those mouths, which were built more than they were painted. Covering the entire lip surface with Dolce’s Precision Lipliner in Ruby, McGrath blended a mix of its Classic Cream Lipstick in Ultra and Amethyst, thus fashioning a berry-tinged scarlet shade that she subsequently blotted and powdered for a flat finish. “It’s a real process,” she joked of the technique, although if ever the “anything worth doing, is worth doing right” adage applied, it’d certainly be here.
Beauty Vending Machines: Coming To A Subway Station Near You?; Fragrance Bottles For Babies; And More…
Prestige skincare in the convenience of a vending machine? Believe it. BeautyMART, the newly launched project of two British beauty-industry vets, puts primping staples a simple press of the button away. MTA officials, are you listening? [Daily Mail]
They’re certainly not the first magazine to do a makeup-free story, but W‘s new issue may do it best. The glossy got Kristen Stewart, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Naomi Watts, Jessica Chastain, and Keira Knightley to go maquillage-free—and guess what? Even with under-eye circles and skin imperfections, they’re all still pretty much drop-dead gorgeous. [Hollywood Life]
It was revealed yesterday via an Instagram from Stefano Gabbana that Dolce & Gabbana is working on a fragrance for babies—a startling revelation that is made that much crazier put into the context of the growing baby-perfume industry. The ultimate luxury is dousing your infant in fine fragrance, it seems. [Fashionista]
Speaking of surprising new scent categories, Stella McCartney would like to bottle the olfactory qualities of a barnyard. The designer, who clearly loves the smell of lily of the valley, which is the top note of her L.I.L.Y scent and its new Absolute, lists her other favorite aromas as the scent of her children’s breath and horses. “My friend and I always joke that one day we’ll launch a horse fragrance—obviously, we’d be the only ones who would buy it,” says McCartney. We’re not so sure about that; brand loyalty can be a funny thing. [InStyle U.K.]