169 posts tagged "Guido Palau"
Cut, Copy
For those of you wondering if the Spring sentiment that sent models to the salon in droves in search of bobs and bowl cuts would return for Fall, the answer appears to be yes. As the shows officially come to an end today, with yet another wig moment at Louis Vuitton, we can confirm that designers are still very much feeling compelling crops. So can Guido Palau. “A lot of people want to see short hair this season,” Palau said backstage at Jean Paul Gaultier, where he was busy trimming “patchwork,” clipped-on-top mullets—a request that he, personally, has been fulfilling with frequency.
It all started at Dior Couture, where the Redken creative consultant gave every girl a convincing pixie cut. Then Palau honed his wig-shaping skills at Marc Jacobs, fashioning an army of Edie Campbells, the Brit It girl he gave a black dye job and a Joan Jett shag for an editorial months earlier. But it didn’t stop there. Sam McKnight picked up the torch at Clements Ribeiro in London, fashioning veritable faux-hawks, a style he reproduced at Fendi in Milan with tight braids accessorized with fox-fur hair pieces a few days later. Next up was Eugene Souleiman’s Rei Kawakubo tribute at Yohji Yamamoto, for which he replicated the Comme des Garçons designer’s architectural black bob, and the stunning pin curls Luigi Murenu designed for Riccardo Tisci’s breathtaking Givenchy collection. Then Karl Lagerfeld got in on the act at Chanel, ordering up colored, similarly graphic hats that sat on top of McKnight’s “done but not done” center-parted strands, thus creating a deceptively short silhouette on top of a long one. This morning, Palau brought it full circle, giving every one of Jacobs’ Louis Vuitton models—Kate Moss included—a “fifties, sort of French Left Bank” bob that was heavy on the mousse for an out-all-night effect.
The season’s overarching punk undertones may have had something to do with the wealth of conceptual cuts that made it onto the runway; nothing captures the subculture’s DIY attitude quite like lopping off excessive length. Suffice it to say, if you’ve ever considered parting ways with your long locks, now would be a great time to do it.
Dissecting the “Language of Beauty,” Backstage at Valentino
“The braid is part of the language of the beauty here,” Guido Palau said backstage at Valentino—a language, it should be noted, that has garnered almost as much attention as Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli’s gorgeous collections for this house. (Red-carpet watchers will fondly remember the plaited coronets Palau constructed four seasons ago that made a seamless—and well-documented—transition off the runway.) “They really understand what women want with beauty,” Palau continued, explaining the design duo’s low-on-product, high-on-accessibility aesthetic—the “I could look like that” factor that comes with the soft, pure, innocent styles they so often request.
For Fall, Palau prepped strands with Redken’s Satinwear 02 Ultimate Blow-Dry Lotion before devising a center part and weaving a simple three-section braid through extended lengths that were slung over models’ left shoulders. Referencing Flemish painters, as well as nodding to the seventies and Victoriana, he fastened a thick black leather band around the head and over the ears for a “monastic” touch.
Pat McGrath worked off Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring portrait that the designers showed her for inspiration, focusing her attention on creating “a softness but a realness” to the face. “There’s always a certain level of color here,” she pointed out, going through a greatest-hits backlog of her work for Chiuri and Piccioli, which has included exquisite lavender and gray contours in the past. This season, although nails were lacquered with two glossy coats of cherry-red polish, McGrath was working with peach, rose, and beige hues that she traced through the crease of eyes, swiped across cheeks, and blotted onto lips, often layering with foundation to “tone everything down.” Powdering complexions to give them the matte, velvety, “put-together” finish we’ve seen so much of this week, McGrath added brown mascara just at the roots of lashes for subtle definition.
Wigging Out, Backstage At Jean Paul Gaultier
If you had a slight feeling of déjà vu upon seeing the spiky black wigs marching down Jean Paul Gaultier’s runway in additional shades of auburn, chestnut, and platinum blond, your mind was playing tricks on you. “It’s like a toupee or a bang,” Guido Palau said of the “patchwork” effect he was hoping to achieve with the deliberately cheap-looking hairpieces here, which were not to be confused with the similarly choppy, high-end crops he hand-dyed and -cut for Marc Jacobs last month. “A lot of people want to see short hair this season and most girls don’t want to cut it,” Palau explained of his recent reliance on wigs, which offer a temporary solution to the predicament. “It’s supposed to look like a girl’s hair that is colored and grown out,” he elaborated of the faux trims here that were meant to deliberately contrast with models’ natural strands where they met as a flat panel in the back. There was a slight nod to the eighties-era androgynous stunner Leslie Winer, although Palau was content to speak to the style’s “punky, boyish, concert-y” quality, which he fashioned using Redken Control Addict 28 High Control Hairspray.
“The brows really help balance it out,” he said of the way Lloyd Simmonds’ “masculine, yet feminine” makeup look complemented his coifs. “There’s a really dark frame to the face, so we needed a dark frame to the girl’s personality. You get a personality with a brow,” Simmonds explained, using a matte black eye shadow to fill in arches while keeping the skin fresh and glowing with YSL’s La Teint Touche Éclat Illuminating Foundation, and a little pressed powder to reduce the risk of shine. A light dusting of blush in shades of light rose and warm gold—”whatever looks good with [the girls'] skin tone”—finished the face.
A Page Out of Pat McGrath’s Silver Lining Playbook, Backstage At Dior
The idea floating around backstage at Christian Dior was the notion of “the ultimate Dior woman, seen through a futuristic eye,” according to Pat McGrath—or, more specifically, Raf Simons’ eye. “He wanted to play with the mouths and make them smaller,” McGrath explained of the designer’s request for “faded lips,” which she obliged with a deep fuchsia stain that was blurred around the edges with a finger-pressing of foundation for a “blooming rose” effect. “There’s a nod to the fifties,” she continued of the collection, which also happened to boast Simons’ particular brand of forward thinking that requires a dose of the here, the now, and the what’s to come. How best to translate that into makeup terms? With a classic cat-eye in an unexpected color and shape, shown here in liquid silver, which was not only drawn across the upper lashes into a flick, but also beneath the lower lash line, and in a small stroke on the inside corner toward the crease as well. “It pronounced the eyes more and gave them a new elegance,” McGrath said of the technique.
Guido Palau was hoping to bring an infusion of newness into the hair as well, which had its roots in fifties couture. “Raf wanted more of an uptown woman who was caught in the rain, but we didn’t want it to feel old,” Palau explained, giving the structured, wig-wrap-turned-twist silhouette a very Fall 2013 wet texture with Redken Control Addict 28 High Control Hairspray and its forthcoming Diamond Oil Shatterproof Shine serum. “I still wanted it to feel elegant,” he noted of the saturated style. Done, and done.
Four Makeup Looks Are Better Than One, Backstage At Lanvin
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.