42 posts tagged "Eugene Souleiman"
Green With Envy, Backstage At Stella McCartney
If there’s one thing you can say about Stella McCartney’s woman, it’s that she’s got great skin. “Very clean skin and beautiful, groomed eyebrows,” confirmed Pat McGrath, who has been on face-painting duty here for quite some time. And that much was still true for Spring, as McCartney ordered up on-site facials for all the girls courtesy of a steam-cleaning with Sunday Riley’s Ceramic Slip Cleanser and a mask of the clay wash mixed with its Good Genes fluid followed by a few drops of its extra-nourishing Juno Serum. “They’re all coming in and they all look so gorgeous already,” McCartney said as she wove in and out of aisles inspecting Anja Rubik and Joan Smalls’ makeup.
Natural beauty was only part of the story here today, though—despite Priti NYC’s Kim D’Amato’s “fifty shades of neutral” nails painted with a trio of her organic lacquers in Sweet Pea, Mediterranean Belles, and Fairy’s Petticoat. “Normally, we do nothing,” McGrath deadpanned, “but we’ve gone back into color.” They sure have; true fashion aficionados will have fond memories of the blue eyelashes the designer and the makeup artist collaborated on last March. This season, they’ve gone green. “It’s just on the inside rim of the eye,” McGrath explained of the CoverGirl Queen Collection Vivid Impact Eyeliner in Jade, which she topped with a few swipes of black mascara on top lashes only. There was some talk between McCartney and McGrath as to whether or not the pencil was working—”it might register too much,” the latter explained of the pop of color that required a certain subtlety. But after a quick inspiection in the bright lights of the pre-show rehearsal, McCartney gave it the OK.
Eugene Souleiman stayed the simplicity course to complement Stella’s clothes with hair that was “quite cool and not too conceptual.” Rehydrating lengths but not ends, Souleiman dried hair while twisting it to impart a slight texture. “It’s a little dirty,” he explained of the intentional rawness he left through the tips before “squashing” front sections of a middle part down and behind the ears. “We’re not reinventing the wheel here,” he joked, although there was a deliberateness to the ease. “If we did a small head, it would have looked too graphic, too futuristic,” the coiffing star explained of why he steered clear of an updo. “This,” he said, motioning to the super-natural style, “is the real future.”
Purple Lips And “Sumo Hair For Women,” Backstage At Haider Ackermann
“There’s no mental masturbation with me; it’s instinct,” Stéphane Marais said straight-faced backstage at Haider Ackermann this morning when asked about that purple lip. “It’s right for the collection,” Marais asserted, “and a refreshment from all the red you have seen”—which was not untrue. Reds, corals, and pinks we have seen this season; an iridescent violet mouth, not so much.
“It could have been a disaster, but it works,” he continued of the unusual pout color, which, it should be noted, did have a way about it: When we walked into the backstage area of Paris’ POPB on Boulevard de Bercy, we crossed paths with Irina Kravchenko, whose mouth flashed with an indigo sheen in the spotlights erected backstage. That was thanks to a finger-patting of MAC Pigment in Violet, which boasts flecks of blue and lavender shimmer. “The more you polish it, the more it shows,” Marais said of the powder that he was rubbing into a mix of MAC Chromagraphic Lip Pencil in Rich Purple and its Lipmix in Burgundy. What kept the striking shade from looking “ugly,” in Marais’ estimation, was that the rest of the face was kept pure. Skin was given a light treatment of MAC Face and Body Foundation, with a sweep of its luminescent Cream Colour Base in Shell across cheekbones, while eyes got a dusting of its Iridescent Powder in Silver Dusk right at the lash line to create an almost wet effect. Ackermann wanted the brows to look “nervous,” so Marais obliged him by diminishing the natural arch with a line of MAC Eyeshadows in Coquette, Concrete, and Brun, creating a straight shape akin to “the wing of a bird,” according to Marais. “It’s very rock, but chic, chic, chic,” he surmised.
For his part, Wella global artistic director Eugene Souleiman set to fixing slicked-back coifs that segued into a ponytail that was folded over itself and tied into three different sections. “It’s sumo hair for women,” he explained, pointing out that the high-shine, abstract shape complimented Ackermann’s collection. “He makes women look very handsome,” Souleiman continued, while squashing Wella Texture Touch Reworkable Clay into roots and spritzing its Shimmer Delight Shine Spray through lengths for glisten. “I am a serious lover of this look,” the super stylist said. He most certainly wasn’t the only one.
At Rochas, Fabrics So Gorgeous, “You Kind Of Want To Wear Them On Your Mouth”
There are certain collections that lend themselves to strong beauty looks, and under Marco Zanini’s tenure, Rochas is definitely one of them. “There are these incredible rosebud-colored patterned florals towards the end [of the show]; you kind of want to wear them on your mouth,” Clé de Peau creative director of makeup Lucia Pieroni said at Zanini’s Spring outing, where lush fabrics were a huge part of the story. The other conversation piece? Pieroni’s flat-finish cerise mouths.
“I’m obsessed with lips at the moment,” the makeup artist joked, having already gifted us with one of the month’s best last week in Milan. Giving skin a pastel, luminescent finish courtesy of a few swipes of Clé de Peau’s Luminizing Face Enhancer in #11, Pieroni dusted lids with the gold color from its forthcoming Eye Color Quad in #209 Sapphire and brushed up brows, leaving lashes without mascara. Then came those pouts, painted with a blend of Clé de Peau Extra Rich Lipstick in R1, “a beetroot red,” according to Pieroni, and R2, “a pillbox red,” which she mixed together and topped with a bit of its Blush Color Duo in Pink for a mattified texture. “Matte to me seems quite modern,” she said, dragging a cotton swab around the edges of the mouth to ensure a soft-focus effect, “as though they’ve really been sucking on a lolly.”
It wasn’t the first look she and Zanini tried, but it was the one that stuck. “The music’s very California, and we went through the process of having the girls look sun-kissed, but they looked too much like a Dutch painting with those hoods,” Pieroni elaborated, motioning to the silk visors-turned-headscarves that Zanini commissioned from the French couture house Lemarié. “She’s a romantic dreamer who does not go out into the sun,” Zanini chimed in of the accessories, which left Wella global creative director Eugene Souleiman very little to work with.
“A ponytail is a little boring, but logistically, it was the only thing we could do,” Souleiman said somewhat begrudgingly, leaving his mark on the look by giving models what he called “premium hair.” “It’s really, supernaturally straight, ” the coiffeur explained, stretching strands with a blow-dryer, coating them with Wella Professionals Shimmer Delight Shine Spray, running them through an iron, and gathering lengths into a low ponytail that he pulled out a bit from the top of the elastic to create a voluminous, pseudo bob beneath the bonnets. “It’s maximized,” he admitted of the end result, “but so subtle it’s not vulgar.”
The Four-Part “Cosmic Couture” Lip Debuts At Missoni
“They are all hating me right now,” Lucia Pieroni joked of the models backstage at Missoni, where she had doled out “dry mouths and sticky eyelids” for the house’s Spring show. That, of course, was an incredibly simplistic description of the makeup artistry that was afoot here, which was attributed to “cosmic couture Japanese manga girls” and just so happened to feature one of the best lips we’ve seen all season.
“It’s a strong, fluoro pink,” Pieroni said of the four-part mouth that included a blend of MAC Lipmix in Magenta, Orange, and White, which the face painter topped with its loose Pigment in Red Electric. “When you mix it, it kind of gets orange, like tequila sunrise,” she explained. The color amounted to a retina-burning melon, which popped against glowing skin that had been lightly contoured through cheeks with MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural face powder in Medium Deep and highlighted with a layering of its luminizing Cream Colour Base in Luna and Pearl. “I wanted there to be something cartoony about it,” Pieroni continued, grooming brows and emphasizing a matte finish on mouths that had been brushed rather than lined. “It starts in the middle and sort of bleeds out,” she stressed of pouts’ “felt tip” quality.
Working off a collection that was very much for “a modern-day girl,” according to Eugene Souleiman, the Wella global artistic director brought the past and the present into the fold with a dichotomous ‘do. “It’s modern-day hippie and slightly space age,” he said of center-parted strands that he “squashed” with Wella Professionals Ocean Spritz Beach Texture Spray. “Normally, when you create a flat hairstyle, you use a gel,” Souleiman explained, pointing out that he was purposely using “the wrong product to get the right result.” The saline spray helped give the coiffeur the “sculptural” look he was that boasted a slight masculinity after he slicked down front sections to resemble long sideburns. “It’s very graphic,” he surmised of the hair—which, as far as he’s concerned, is a textile not unlike clothing. “It’s a fabric you can play with.”
Helmet Hair And Inky Eyes, Backstage At Mary Katrantzou
“I’m glad to be getting back to my roots,” Eugene Souleiman joked—no pun intended—backstage at Mary Katrantzou, where the hair hero and Wella Professionals global artistic director made his grand return to London fashion week after a five-year hiatus. He picked a good show for his comeback, too; Katrantzou’s whimsical prints pack plenty of power in the way of beauty inspiration.
“[They're] very conceptual,” Souleiman admitted of the designer’s Spring fabrics, which included colorful, graphic adaptations of exotic stamps and banknotes, which caused the coiffeur to stay the “couture and sharp” course with the hair in complement. “The detail of the clothes needed something minimal to go with it,” he elaborated of the four-section updo that was based loosely on the aerodynamic shape of a “cycling helmet.” Prepping strands with Wella Create Character Texturizing Spray, Souleiman built a tight bun with the bulk of models’ lengths to anchor a panel of hair from the right side, followed by a panel of hair on the left side that he wrapped and secured on top of the chignon. A front section of hair was then combed backward and set with Wella Finish Shimmer Delight Shine Spray to “elongate and extend the shape of the head in a slightly alien way.” An additional otherworldly element came from Josh Wood, the London-based colorist who dyed a few girls, including Australian stunner Chrystal Copland, a platinum shade akin to “crisp linen” using Wella’s new Illumine range.
Makeup artist Val Garland’s contributions centered around a “ballpoint blue eye that referenced the inky colors of an English pound” (editor’s note: Blue is the new black when it comes to eyeliner for Spring). The precise shade of matte midnight pigment was a mix of two MAC Lipmixes in Blue and Red, which Garland drew onto the upper lash line in a thick, elongated, almond shape to adhere to Katrantzou’s mandate that the girls look “modern and linear.” Garland ditched mascara altogether and gave lips a clear moisturized finish with a swipe of MAC Lip Conditioner. Her intention was to keep skin looking “polished,” which was just fine with St. Tropez skin finishing expert Nichola Joss, who was giving models a “velvet tan” by buffing St. Tropez Instant Glow Wash Off Mousse mixed with its Body Butter into skin with a mitt, to which she added a light layer of St. Tropez Rose Skin Illuminator for a pastel sheen.