18 posts tagged "Gareth Pugh"
The (Beauty) Beat Goes On
In case you’ve somehow missed the barrage of bulletins from Paris—via Twitter, text, Instagram, Tumblr, and good old-fashioned phone calls—Cher (CHER!) is at the Fall collections.The legendary singer—and, lest you’ve forgotten, Academy Award-winning actress—made Gareth Pugh her first stop of the week yesterday and answered the burning question of whether or not that would be her only stop by showing up, arm in arm with Fergie, at Balmain this afternoon. At 66, the style icon still looks amazing and, it should be pointed out, is still very much on message. The red eye shadow Cher had slicked across her lids in the front row of Olivier Rousteing’s show happens to be the very same color many a face painter has gravitated towards for Fall. “There’s a sort of seventies feeling to it,” makeup artist James Kaliardos said of the cranberry tint that has turned up at Diane von Furstenberg, Gucci, and Anthony Vaccarello—and has long been a favorite makeup trick of the music legend, who is apparently still setting trends all these years later. Yet another reason to add the color to your eye-makeup arsenal, stat.
“Wearable, Felt” Makeup And Nails That Are Anything but Nude, Backstage At Gareth Pugh
There was a lot going on backstage at Gareth Pugh‘s Spring show. After walking through the incense and smoke-filled venue, we arrived to find makeup artist Alex Box cooing over her nine-week-old baby. “He likes the attention,” she said of Marlo Ray, who was getting plenty of it from models like Nadja Bender, who came over to marvel at Box’s beautiful little boy. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I feel I’ve been melted and someone’s poured me back into me,” the proud mother effused. No wonder there was a noted change in the beauty look here.
“I thought I’d do something for people to wear for a change,” the woman responsible for Pugh’s Spring 2010 gray-tinged, “goddesses from the grave” faces and Spring 2012′s plastic-film eyebrow moment deadpanned. The molten red “structural, but felt” lids courtesy of a blend of MAC Eyeshadows in Coppering, Cranberry, All That Glitters, Honey Lust, and Basic Red that was given definition with a line of its Lip Pencil in Cherry along the inner rims may not count as “wearable” for some people, nor will the drip of special-effect liquid tears Box added right before girls went out onto the runway for an “emotional” element likely find its way into many people’s daily routines. But this might be as close as we’re going to get with Pugh and Box—the latter of whom’s red lip, a combination of MAC Lip Pencil in Auburn and its Lipmix in Red, ranks right up there with some of the most impressive mouths we’ve seen this season.
But that’s not all we have to report. In a season that’s been filled with nude nails and less successful nail art moments, Marian Newman managed to turn out one of the coolest polish protocols we’ve seen. You asked for it on Instagram, so without further adieu, the method behind Newman’s “blood and tears” manicure madness: Start with a thick “blob” of MAC Nail Lacquer in Rogue Marie at the cuticle line and paint a quarter of the way up the base of the nail. Then add its crimson varnish in Shirelle toward the top, blending the two colors with upward brushstrokes for an ombré effect. Top with a glossy coat of MAC’s Overlacquer and congratulate yourself on pulling off our favorite nail moment yet.
Gareth Pugh X MAC: “Makeup as Modern Armor”
Gareth Pugh is no stranger to the wonderful world of makeup. “Every day I wear black eye liner—top and bottom—right in the corners, and I smudge it a little bit with my finger,” Pugh says, revealing that MAC Studio Fix foundation and its Lip Conditioner also make it into his bag on the regular. Still, when we broke the news this summer that fashion’s reigning prince of darkness would be launching a full-scale, limited-edition cosmetics collection with MAC in the fall, it was a bit of a surprise: Pugh isn’t so much into color. “It’s something that I don’t really get to do so much,” he admits, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t up for the challenge. “It was really nice to be able to think in terms of something other than clothing, where obviously color is a very big part of the process,” the British designer says of the 18-piece range of pigments and accessories he’s launching with the mega brand next month. It includes deep burgundy Metal-X Cream Eye Shadows, dark mulberry lipsticks, lavender Lipglasses, and iridescent nail lacquers with blue/violet bases. The range boasts custom-designed lacquered packaging unlike anything MAC has launched before. “I wanted something quite angular and sharp and straight,” Pugh explains, pointing to a black cube he keeps in his inspiration coffers that informs a fair bit of his work. “Even when I was designing my shop in Hong Kong, the idea was to make it look as if you stepped in a black cube, because a lot of what I do comes from that idea—and that black is kind of my thing.” Here, Pugh talks eyelashes, the joy of collaboration, and “adding another string to [his] ball” with a product that has mass appeal.
What was the creative process like for your first foray into beauty?
It was very much about taking the essence of what I do and making something that could be extreme, but also could be taken down to a beautiful nail polish or a beautiful lipstick—things that work in their own right, rather than just all components of one particular look. We agreed on a loose framework of products that we wanted to do and then, you know, in my studio I have a lot of things that I like to collect, for one reason or another—things that I just kind of like the look of. I am of the thought that things always come in handy at some point, so it was a real opportunity for me to go and have a rummage around. It was just kind of putting it all down, having this big pile in front of me, and choosing from that and laying it out on—not necessarily a mood board, but more so a chart.
Got it. So what kind of things made it onto this “chart?”
Fabrics I have in my collection; a feather from this collection I did that was all gray with lots of headdresses; a butterfly wing that this guy gave me in Paris as a business card; a rock that I bought at a shop in New York… it was kind of a broad range, but not just anything and everything. I was trying to sort of edit the choices of colors before I sent them over to make a nice little story.
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Gareth Gets Glam
We broke the news last month that Gareth Pugh would be bringing his special brand of gothic futurism to the beauty sphere through a collaboration with MAC Cosmetics. Last night, the makeup giant made it official. “We look for collaborations with young designers; that’s why we’ve always been so supportive of Gareth and what he does,” said MAC senior vice president of Global Product Development Jennifer Balbier over cocktails at New York’s New Museum. “The super-edited collection is going to be something that everyone who either knows Gareth or wants to experience Gareth will buy,” Balbier continued of the limited-edition range that bows in November. It’s an interesting premise, considering “accessible” isn’t a word often associated with Pugh’s work. “It’s interesting for me to have another kind of string to my ball,” Pugh said of his entrance into the realm of nail polishes and eyeliners—both of which he was sporting last night. “I would never say that something like this is a compromise to what I do, it is an extension of that…and it was really nice for me to be able to think in terms of something other than clothing because I don’t do a lot of color; it’s black—or black.” So, does this mean his beauty effort will be bursting with corals, aquas, and the like? Probably not, but the rainbow iridescent quality of the dark lacquer painted onto his fingertips is a good place to start.
Breaking: Gareth Pugh For MAC
Gareth Pugh is best known in the beauty-sphere for the otherworldly backstage looks that he cooks up with makeup artist Alex Box each season for his high-concept ready-to-wear presentations. Who can forget Pugh’s Goddesses From the Grave Spring 2010 show, featuring a barrage of models sporting a gray complexion (courtesy of an airbrushed application of MAC Pro Micronized Airbrush Foundation in a combination of Black and White), bleached brows, and eyes lined in red pigment? MAC Cosmetics certainly hasn’t forgotten. The makeup giant has just announced that it is pairing up with Pugh for a full-scale collection that will launch globally in November. The range will include multiple color products and accessories in “special packaging,” which we imagine will focus heavily on Pugh’s preferred palette of black, white, and gray. Style.com also hears that the products will make their debut at a cocktail party next month in New York to celebrate the collaboration, followed by a backstage turn at the designer’s show in Paris come October. For those of you wondering how Pugh’s special brand of gothic gloom will translate in makeup terms, his unexpected divergence into a (limited) selection of bold color for Fall could offer a clue. Those memorable cobalt blue and gold looks sure would look nice in eye shadow form.