Posts Tagged ‘Vivienne Westwood’

As the fashion parade move onto Milan, lets have a look at some homegrown beauty trends. London and New York shared a lot of similarities in the beauty stakes, but London took first place with its cool British edge.

Plaits were used on a variety of catwalks in London but Danielle Scutt and Ashish did it best, putting a slight twist on the everyday style. Scutt toughened up the soft makeup with an armor-tight French plait, while Ashish went whimsical with a windswept braid, pink glitter on the lids and sharpened it with black lipstick. French plaits are difficult to do to yourself, but using the Davines Texturiser beforehand helps keep the sections in place while you twist them together. It really helps hold the messed up, tousled style too without looking too grunge.

The essence of cool at LFW is always Christopher Kane and Burberry, classic styling and always effortless. This year both ofthe top designers focused on a youthful and pretty look with velvety skin. Burberry opted for a tulip pink lip while Kane had a natural taupe on the lids and a pink stain on the lips.

The perfect foundation for the natural looking makeup is Perricone MD’s No Foundation Foundation, a lightweight coverage that also makes your skin to glow through naturally. To keep the skin velvety like the Burberry models, dust on some 3 Custom Color Translucent Face Powder to mattify.

Meanwhile at Giles, the girls were made to look like they’d all been enjoying a little tipple before the show. Cheeks were wine flushed and the lips were ‘red wine’ stained with the rest of the look kept simple – gorgeous! Erdem also sported a red lip this season in the form of a bright red lipstick to ‘show that the Erdem girl is wearing her heart on her mouth instead of her sleeve.’

Stain the lips and cheeks with Besame Cosmetics Enriched Lip Glaze in Cherry Red by dabbing and blending with fingers to create a light colour. Then blot the glaze onto lips to create the stain. To be an Erdem girl, pick up the 3 Custom Color Century in Red Palette to create the perfect red (in fact you can completely hedge your lipstick bets with this palette!).

Worn in looks are always a must in London; no one does the grunge look quite like the British. Roksanda Ilinic and Holly Fulton lead the way for the grunge revival but made it a little more polished and worn in. Ilnic took its main influence from Kate Moss in the 90s for a polished ‘day-old’ look while Fulton made the models into ‘trashy lush girls’ with worn in eyes and feathered brows.

Holly Fulton was all about smudged smokey eyes, it couldn’t be easier to recreate this look with the Stila Smudge Pot in Black – use your fingers to apply it all around your eye and then blend it out. The Ilnic eyes featured a good dose of eyeliner too, the Balm Pick Up Liners are perfect for defining the eyes and creating the little feline flick.

It wouldn’t be Fashion Week without a few unique hairstyles – the most fun of the looks came from Mulberry while Topshop Unique went all Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. The extra large Bardot-inspired beehives at Mulberry were modernized with candy coloured extensions – go big or go home! Meanwhile Topshop Unique covered the front of the models’ Alexander Wang style hair with gold leaf to create the ethereal look as influenced by Liz Taylor’s version of Cleopatra.

The Mulberry beehive involves a lot of backcombing (and a little help from extensions) to create the gigantic look; prep hair with the Davines Texturiser then after styling set with Davines For Wizards No7 Crystal Fixactive Lacquer.

Eyes were the main focus at Fashion Week, the easiest of facial features to accentuate and create a whole variety of looks with. Unconditional created dramatic bronzy eyes, Vivienne Westwood Red Label changed her models into neo-neon nymphs while Marios Schwab opted for fuzzy feline eyes.

To get the dramatic bronzy eye, layer the lid with Illamasqua Liquid Metal in Enrapture and smoke it out around the edges with some of their Pure Pigment in Fervent. Create the feline eyes from Schwab with the Prestige Cosmetics Liquid Eyeliner in Black to get a precise line on the top and bottom lashes.

Cate Sewell

Zzzzzz ngg zzzzh huh! what? Oh yes, beauty on the catwalks of London. Usually so wacky the looks make your eyes bleed, this season was as bland as a beige twinset. Very little to be said really, flawless matt skin, camel, caramel, taupe, greige, cream, toffee, tan, stone, fawn – are you asleep yet – tones. Light brown or no mascara, strong Natalia Vodianova-style eyebrows, contoured blusher with a hint of peach on the apple and basically a couple of seconds to run a brush through the model’s hair before they made their entrance, was there something good on TV?

In fact the only looks of real note were created by MAC’s Gordon Espinet for Vivienne Westwood (pictured below). Inspired by Irving Penn portraits, Gordon used contouring shades to trompe l’oeil and give a dramatic, stylistic, cartoonish quality to the girls. This is a little extreme but contouring is a serious art, once mastered this technique can enhance and beautify a face making noses appear smaller, cheek bones higher, lips bigger and faces thinner. MAC do a two-tone compact from their Shape & Sculpt range and Stila do a trio to help you pull off the right tonal colour play so you don’t look like a renegade paintballer who just went feral. alexia inge

The only other purveyor of fun and optimism was the lovely Alex Box at House of Blue Eyes (pictured below), using Illamasque to create Hindu Gods that just got back from Burning Man.