Written by IntoTheGloss
Let’s take it back, folks. Shows are great, but backstage is where it’s really happening. Tune in all week for behind-the-scenes info on the New York Fashion Week beauty looks and for the second-season running of Tom’s Take on what we’ll be seeing IRL very soon.
Marc by Marc Jacobs sephora backstage beauty fall 2015
MARC BY MARC JACOBS
Tom’s Take: “The beauty here was inspired by ‘revolutionaries’—I guess that means messy, textured-but-flat, mousse-filled hair paired with a very angsty, teenage-girl-looking eye. Makeup was Marc Jacobs Beauty—mascara & liner on the top and bottom, inside and outside. It was somewhat Margot Tenenbaum-esque. This was all finished off by a very cool badge filled beret.”
Guido Palau (Redken) : “The beret is really the style today, and the hair underneath is just textured to give you that rebelliousness in a way. The girl is always the Marc by Marc girl—young with a point of view. She’s out there marching, or she’s a guardian angel, or she’s a revolutionary. She’s all those little things that girls are at some point in their lives when they feel strongly about something. For models who get here early, we’ll air-dry, but the one’s who get here later, we’ll use a diffuser to keep the texture. I’m using Redken’s Full Frame 07 Volumizing Mousse. When you do put the product in, it lets out the natural movement of the hair. It will half-dry with a little bit of sheen in it—definitely not a ‘wet look.’ I wanted some lightness in the hair. If it were too dry, the texture would have been too heavy against the clothes.”
DONNA KARAN
Tom’s Take: “This show always has such a strongly tied together aesthetic with the girls, the makeup, nails, & hair—it all gels well. Charlotte Tilbury was here using MAC. It was lovely makeup, very Tilbury-esque with the dusty-rose saturated cheeks, matching lips, & a light, neutral lid. The hair was long & sleek—every girl got extensions that were then cut into precise, straight-across styles.The nails were painted in beautiful soft browns. A warm deep neutral is a nice alternative to the light neutral-pink every girl seems to sport, right?”
Charlotte Tilbury (MAC): “The inspiration is Lauren Bacall in a much more sober, minimalist, contemporary way—taking a little bit of that beauty and glamour and sort of deconstructing it. The lipstick we’re using is this tawny rose color, and we’re putting it on with a finger all around the lips. We’ve paired that with a lip liner, which is slightly lighter than the lipstick, and we’re dabbing the lipstick onto the cheeks as well. No mascara, no eyelash curling. Eyeshadow is Mac Pro Longwear Paint Pot in Painterly all the way over the lid, all the way to the brows, and then a thin line in chocolate brown for liner, topped off with a light MAC Studio Eye Gloss so that it really picks up the light and is quite dreamy.”
Deborah Lippmann: “We’re using All About That Base, which is my new CC base coat—this is basically like a ridge-filler treatment for the nails, so when you go to apply any color on top of the nail it lays on without any streaking, which can be a challenge with neutral nude-creams. Then we’re painting the models’ nails and toes with a new collection of nudes launching in October. What I’m finding from the designers is that their vision of what used to be a neutral nail—put on a sheer pink—is no longer the case. Sometimes it’s opaque, sometimes it’s sheer, but it definitely spans a wider range of color. There is really strong jewelry in the show and we didn’t want the nails to disappear. One of the shades we’re using is a version of a nude beige called Skin Deep that I like because it’s really universal. Then we’re finishing the look off with Gel Lab top coat, making them super, super shiny.”
3.1 PHILLIP LIM
Tom’s Take: “The only red lips I’ve seen in a long time, very classic & clean. The hair was the same way & the nails were a nice dark color. It was simple, but there was more of a beauty story here than at a lot of shows. People might say that undone skin feels boring, but it to me, the realness is more exciting than a standard beauty look.”
Francelle Daly (Nars): “Our look today is very utilitarian modern punk. What that means is I deconstructed the face because I wanted raw, radiant skin. I used the Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturizer, which has a little bit of an SPF to it, and it covers with the pigment but without the weight of it, so it really emulates the natural radiance of skin. I didn’t want the skin to look super finished—I wanted it to be really glowy and natural. The brows have no product in them, but they’re brushed up to give an unruly type of texture—kind of an undone feel. There’s a little bit of a light-reflecting quality with a new blush from Nars, called Tribulation [ed note: new for Fall 2015]. It’s a shade that anybody can wear…I did it on the high planes of the cheekbone, a little bit of the bridge of the nose, and a tiny bit on the chin, just to give it a natural light. Last but not least, I’m obsessed with the shade of oxblood red and Nars has an amazing shade called VIP [ed note: new for Fall 2015, for now try Nars Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Mysterious Red]—it looks good on everybody. It’s a really nice, refined lip. The finish is more of a semi-matte. I didn’t want it to be shiny, but there’s no lip liner either. It’s chic and understated, but bold.”
TOMMY HILFIGER
Tom’s Take: “When I got here, reporters were lined up everywhere, and the girls were rehearsing on a giant football field where the show was held. The look was really simple, whereas I was expecting war paint, football-inspired makeup from the setup. But it was nice and still sporty— a clean, brown eye, a strong brow, and a peachy, dusty lip.”
Pat McGrath (CoverGirl):”The inspiration is Ali MacGraw in Love Story and all-american beauties—very sporty, beautifully groomed brows and perfected skin. On the eyes we used the CoverGirl Eye Shadow Quads in Notice Me Nudes which are four shadows that are real high-impact. It gives you easy colors to make a whole eye. An old tip is to use your eyeshadow a little bit wet, so that you’ve got more control of the shadow. Dampen your brush a little, and just contour with the darkest shade around the eye, a softer shade on the lids, and have your brows be really super groomed. We’ve got the Bombshell Powder Brow and Liner which is great and enables you to fill in your brows with a powder shadow. It comes in four different shades. Then on the lashes, we used CoverGirl LashBlast Full Lash Bloom Mascara. For lips, we used CoverGirl Lipslicks Smoochies Lip Balm in Sweet Tweet. We were going to use blush but actually now that we see the rehearsals, we’re going to take the blush off. It’s very simple makeup—all about that beautifully structured brow, fresh skin, and subtle eye enhancement.”
PRABAL GURUNG
Prabal Gurung Fall Winter 2015 New York
Tom’s Take: “Adirondacks-inspired beauty & supers from the late ‘90s/early 2000s. The women here all looked so good. Kirsty Hume, Frankie Rayder, Tasha Tilberg, Christina Kruse (AHHH!!!), Caroline Trentini—somehow over the past few years she’s gone from being a doll-faced girl to womanly presence-full supermodel. They all looked so damn good, and thankfully Diane Kendal’s idea of ‘Adirondacks Beauty’ + my own match pretty well. It’s very peachy with just-back-from-hiking cheeks, lots of luminizer, & a bit of warm brown on the lids. Jin Soon Choi was also there doing nails for Sally Hansen. It was their 10th season working together, and they created three new colors which her assistant described as ‘a bit dirtier and grittier’ that will be out in Fall 2015.”
Diane Kendal (MAC): “We’ve done the face really quite fresh, just a wash of color on the lid. When I did the test looks, I didn’t really realize older girls were going to be in the show, and so with older girls you need something to really make their eyes pop a bit more—that’s why I decided to do the black thin line with MAC Pro Creme Liner very close to the lashes, topping the eye look off with mascara on top. For everything else, we’re just brushing eyebrows and using a new MAC blush called Peach Fuzz [ed note: available Winter 2015] on the apples of the cheeks and MAC Sculpting Powder Pro Palette in Sculpt. For the face we’re using MAC Mineralize Timecheck Lotion [ed note: available Fall/Winter 2015] to prep the skin, then we’re going into the MAC Studio Conceal and Correct Palette to cover up redness as needed. We’re using just a white shimmer powder as highlighter above the eyebrow peak to reflect the light and help sculpt the face. I like to highlight on top of the brow bone, on top of the cheekbone, down the center of the nose, and a bit on the chin. It really gives dimension and feel to the makeup. Really, you’re just accentuating the girls’ natural features to make them look glowing and healthy.”
Jin Soon Choi (Sally Hansen): “The nail look varies. Some of the girls will only have the gray color, whereas others will have gray with the tip—Prabal decides. It depends on the colors of the apparel and design. The tip detail is in the center, about one-third of the nail down and striped. I try to give all the models an equal tip. Some people say ‘Jin, how do I make the tip straighter?’ So all nail art brushes and stripers are very pointy—I cut the tip to make it straighter. With the color, don’t push down so much. Tape is the easiest method though.”
THAKOON
Tom’s Take: “This backstage had no room at all—very cramped, but I loved the makeup & hair. Odile—bless her soul—has been at each and every show it seems. She created a beautiful SLEEK (hate that word but not sure what else describes this?) look—very geometric with the part…Do girls think about that stuff? Odile used Kérastase Keratine Thermique on the girls’ hair to blow dry it + some perfect-magic sort of comb to create a very defined T of hair on each girls head. Then she brushed in some Kérastase Fix Fabulous spray to give it shine and hold it in. She used a bit of the V.I.P. Dry Volumizing and Texturizing Spray to create the lightest bit of texture on the mid-lengths of the hair, and finally used yet another hairspray, this time Kérastase Laque Dentelle Flexible Hold Hairspray, plus some Kérastase Résistance Fibre Architecte to tame flyaways. It was pin straight hair, but in a nice way. The makeup had me swooning a bit. I LOVE white on the waterline or even a nude. It makes you look so much more awake and wide-eyed. This is also the fifth warm-colored eye we’ve seen—lots of coppers & oranges on the lids this season.”
Diane Kendal (Nars): “The inspiration for Thakoon this season was the Northern Lights, so we wanted that kind of light-reflective quality in the makeup. We’ve evened out skin tone, but on the eyes we’re using blushes. These are the Dual-Intensity Blushes [ed note: available Spring 2015] which work wet-to-dry, and I’ve wet them. First I use the bronze shade all over the lid, just blend it out into the temples, and I pumped it with a peachy color a little bit more on top. We’re just brushing the eyebrows and filling in where necessary and using a white pencil on the inside of the eye. For blush were using Nars Blush in Tribulation [ed note: new for Fall 2015], which has a really beautiful shimmer, and it’s a really soft hue—so we’re just doing that on top of the cheekbones again blending up into the temples. And we’re just pumping that with a white highlighter on top of the cheekbones and on top of the brow bones, down the nose. For the lips, were using this color VIP Red [ed note: new for Fall 2015, for now try Nars Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Mysterious Red], and I’m just applying it with my finger so it just gives you that beautiful stain.”
PUBLIC SCHOOL
Tom’s Take: “Very cool. The models were cool (Jess Stam! Issa! Grace Mahary!), the clothes were cool, the music was cool (80’s Madonna <3) & the beauty was cool. ‘90s inspired mauve lip, created with a eyebrow pencil by Grace Lee for Maybelline. The hair was ‘90s club kid—sweaty at the top and loose at the bottom by Antoinette Beenders for Aveda. Everything looked very crisp.”
VICTORIA BECKHAM
Tom’s Take: “Pat McGrath created the most beautiful droopy messy black + burgundy under eye line here. It made the girls look very grumpy in some chic beautiful way—the skin was very dewy, everyone’s lips looked so damn good compared to all the crusty dry lip looks I’ve seen. I really loved this. The nails were very clean and simple, and the hair was a super-cool, undone, low-bun version of what Guido did at Prada Menswear recently. ”
Guido Palau (Redken): “We are doing a very simple, half ponytail knot thing…I don’t know what else to call it. The key is the quality of the hair. We blow-dried the hair with Satinwear 02 Prepping Blow-Dry Lotion on damp hair, which is a great Redken heat styling product. Then we took a round brush or a flat paddle brush, depending on the texture of the hair, and just smoothed it back away from the face with my fingers as a comb. I’m spraying Redken’s Forceful 23 Super Strength Finishing Spray hairspray on my fingers and then raking it into the hair so that it’s not all over, but there’s still a toughness. It’s a sophisticated look combined with an easy look. It adds to the Victoria Beckham idea of beauty, which is very pulled-together but with an easy attitude.”
ALTUZARRA
Tom’s Take: “All the girls were coming from Alexander Wang still looking a bit dead, which worked because the look here was sorta dead-ish as well. The lips were all crackly, light, & nude colored—like foundation applied to dry lips. The eye makeup was super beautiful—romantic maybe? It looked quite different on each girl but was a combination of a steel grey color & a warm copper color. The two were smudged together with a bit of wetness overtop. I like that I’m seeing a lot of smudgy, creamy eye looks. I’ve never been a fan of blended, perfectly defined eyeshadow, and this seems more wearable. Odile did the loveliest weaved in-&-out intricate bun, low in the back, which reminds me a bit of stuff I’ve seen her wear on herself.”
Tom Pecheux (MAC): “[Odile] Gilbert wanted something extremely natural and evanescent for the hair, and I was thinking of Ingrid Bergman and places where it’s cold and the natural beauty is part of the reality—like the north of Sweden, Iceland, and Scotland—so I wanted to recreate that. I used the new MAC Mineralize Moisture SPF 15 Foundation with a brush. It really makes the skin matte, and theres a little bit of the goth thing that I like about it. The lips are also very matte, almost dry, with a little bit of concealer and just a veil of color using a bit of gray. There is nothing on the cheeks, no mascara—eyebrows only if needed, but I like to keep them as natural and pale as possible. I wanted everything to be quite monochrome.
On the eyes, I created a version of a smokey eye, where half of the eye—from the inside corner to the middle of the eyelid—is gray and the other half—from the outside corner of the eyelid to the middle of the eye—is like a burnt-orange-brown color, both on the top and bottom, using the new MAC Trend Forecast eye palette [ed note: available Fall 2015]. To mix the colors, we put a new kind of purple gloss in the middle. It’s just a touch of color and it will move—little by little the colors will mix, but only in the middle.”
ALEXANDER WANG
Tom’s Take: “So Wang is using makeup this season, and the theme was rock and roll corpses. The skin was paled out & hollow looking—Diane Kendal was there for Nars. There were lots of grays & purples—she used the Vientiane Matte Multiple, Nars Duo Eyeshadow in Bellissima, Nars Eye Paint in Transvaal and the new Aigle Noir Velvet Shadow Stick [ed note: available Fall 2015]. It was actually very beautiful, in a creepy way. The hair was a ‘wet look’—but very messy and sculpted. It looked like something dark and romantic taken from Guido’s hair book actually. There were so, so, so many big models here. Cat McNeil was sprawled out on the ground, either relaxing or avoiding the backstage photogs. Kendall was there for a second. Ashleigh Good was there with her baby! Behati was there, too—180 degree switch-up from the last time I photographed her in that pink silk robe, giant hair, & blushy, pink, healthy face. Seems she can pull off any beauty look, unsurprisingly.”
Guido Palau (Redken): “We’ve got very greasy, kind of stringy-shiny, gothicky hair—it’s all going to be over the face. I find it very nighttime and Marilyn Manson-y, in a way. The more individual the girls look for this show the better. When the girls come in, and we literally then just laid them with Diamond Oil Shatterproof Shine. It took out any body and made it shiny and as lank as possible. Usually the Diamond Oil is used to give a light kind of shimmer to the hair, but oftentimes I use products in a way that they’re not suggested because I find new textures and new kind of forms. The only sort of shape I’m giving it is parting the hair so the ears stick out and teasing it with my hand, using Redken’s Forceful 23 Super Strength Finishing Spray to lock in that mess. It’s meant to feel very heavy in a way, kind of rock ‘n roll—not in a very pretty way, but in a much darker way.”
Michelle Saunders (Essie): “We are doing a color called Jazz. I like to call it an obscure color because it’s been in our collection for a long time, but we’ve brought it back to life with Alexander Wang. He really loved it because it has this ghostly quality which goes with his army-of-darkness models. Were adding Matte About You Matte Finisher on top to keep it a little bit more undead.”
WES GORDON
Tom’s Take: “Day 1 gave us ‘natural beauty’—maybe we saw this coming though? The nails were really cool, but when I mentioned that they looked nail-arty to Rita Remark she was like, ‘No—this is nail fashion.’ They did a chalkboard-matte base & it had a little, metallic dark-blue-square bit in the center. I really liked how it looked. The makeup was a blushier, softer take on ‘no-makeup’ via James Kaliardos. The girls looked very rosy, which I absolutely love. They had Maybelline’s brow pencils and gel around, but I saw them using this mascara instead—which was kinda cool…the brows had a lovely soft-focus thing going on with them. They were like anti-Instagram brows—there were no strong lines, everything was bold but very blurred.”
James Kaliardos (Maybelline): “The face today is about how a woman feels when she gets dressed in the morning. You feel good about taking your lipstick with you—sort of like you’re covered in your favorite things. Your lipstick is like your friend! So you take it along for the day—it’s like your accessory instead of just makeup. To start, we’re using some new Maybelline products. There’s the Dream Wonder Fluid-Touch Foundation—that’s very thin and liquid-y, but it smooths everything out—with some Fit Me Blush in Medium Nude on top. Then we used mascara to build from the root out. There’s some deepening of the eyelid in a very natural way with The Nudes Palette. The brows are made smokier and hazy with Brow Drama Sculpting Brow Mascara instead of something angular. We did a matte, nude lip with Color Sensational Creamy Mattes in Daringly Nude, which felt very luxurious but also strong and powerful in its own way—sort of what the shoulder pads did in the 1940s during the war.”
Rita Remark (Essie): “I’m really happy to say, this season we’re seeing a lot more color because for the past four seasons, I’d be describing nails as crisp or clean. Now we’ve got a little more flexibility when it comes to deeper, strong statement colors—not even necessarily nail art, just something there rather than nothing. Here we’re using two shades—Smokin’ Hot, which is a great great gray with some violet in it, and we’re mattifying that with Matte About You Matte Finisher. It gives it this great, chalkboard finish. To add a little bit of texture, we added one coat of Sexy Divide—just as a square accent at the center of each tip—and it gave a bit of a glow finish. It’s temperate, modern, and a little bit edgy—so it matches perfectly with the show.”
JASON WU
Tom’s Take: “I got at this show around 10:30am and there was only one model there—luckily for me it was Aya Jones. Apparently Aya loves La Roche-Posay moisturizer & doesn’t believe in cleanser. The makeup look was Charlotte Rampling-inspired. The hero products would be the dusty rose lipstick & the silver + grey shadows she used to shape & sculpt the eye and give that vibe. The hair was beautifully tousled by Odile—using the Kérastase spray. Very loose & sexy. On an unrelated note, Deborah Lippmann cut her hair! It’s so short now—she told me she’s gone back 3x to cut it more. She was doing Karlie’s nails when we talked, who was scrolling through her Instagram looking at all the tagged photos of her Vogue cover with Taylor that came out today.”
Odile Gilbert (Kérastase): “I’m using the Kérastase K Spray À Porter Tousled Effect Spray to get a little Kate Moss-messy style. So I spray, I dry the hair, and I curl it—but only the middle, not the roots or the ends. It just needs a little texture. It’s a subtle kind of sexy.”
Diane Kendal (Lancôme): “Jason’s inspiration was Charlotte Rampling, so we wanted to do a face that was really fresh and beautiful, using a color palette that just accentuates the face—less ’60s and more Helmut Newton in the ’70s. We prepped the skin with Advanced Génifique Youth Activating Concentrate and used the Lancôme Nude Miracle. That just gives a really even tone and smooths everything out. For the eyes, we used the lighter color on the lid and the darker color in the contour from the Jason Wu for Lancôme Multi-Palette [ed note: available July 2015], then we are curling the lashes and just putting one coat on the top. We’re brushing eyebrows and putting a groomer in to keep them in place. We’re not using blush—we’re just using this color underneath the contour and then brushing up the cheekbones. For the lips, we’re doing Lancôme Rouge in Love High Potency Lip Color in Delicate Lace, which is a very nude-pink lip. For some of the darker girls we won’t put anything on, just lip balm. I’m not using powder, so it’s just their natural shine coming through. It’s very natural and consumer friendly—anyone could wear this look.”
Deborah Lippmann: “We’re doing a very, very sheer, super-glam coating. When you have someone as gorgeous as Karlie you don’t need any of the direction going anywhere else. So, it’s a natural nail with a little bit of shine.”
ADAM SELMAN
Tom’s Take: “This was cool, as we all predicted. I kind of wish he did fake freckles again this season but maybe that would’ve been boring. The casting was cool—Hari Nef was there, Mona Matsuoka, too. The hair by Jimmy Paul was the statement piece—it was like a bad-girl biker from the ’60s. Like giant, giant Ronnie Spector-style hair. The makeup was gorgeous, too—clean skin, soft pink lip, & a smushed, easy, purple glossy eye. Madeline Poole did the nails with awesome squiggly lines. Nail art is acceptable this season, and it’s looking so awesome.”
Maki Ryoke (MAC): “I didn’t want to go too natural—we kept it somewhat modern, since everything else has quite an electro-feeling to it. For fresh healthy skin, we used just a thin layer of concealer for redness if needed. On the eyes, we used the new Trend Forecast eye palette [ed note: available Fall 2015] in the berry shade on the top of the lid. I used MAC Mixing Medium Shine over top to make a dewy look and highlight the inner corner of the eye and cheek to enhance the healthiness. Then I used the new Trend Forecast palette for lips [ed note: available Fall 2015] in the salmon shade to even out the lip tone. But that’s a bit too sweet for me, so on top of it I used the shimmery silver shade to it to make it look colder. It becomes very muted all over. That’s my version of modern bad girl.”
Madeline Poole (Sally Hansen): “So Adam has a lot of rickrack on the edges of his collection—there’s bows and all that stuff you’d find on ’70s kidswear. When I saw it I was like, ‘Doing rickracks now. Done.’ Everyone’s manicure has its own personality in the way we draw the squiggles. We’re using two colors from the Miracle Gel collection—Wine Stock and Blacky O. It’s a gel-nail polish hybrid and has this really dense opacity. Basically, I will lay a striping brush on the nail and squiggle it, and then you have a thin floppy line—you can clean it up, thicken it, and shape it. It’s time consuming, which is why we’re scrambling to get things done, but because it’s more of an organic shape and not a jagged edge, it’s easier to do with your non-dominant hand. Then we just do a high-gloss finish with the Miracle Gel Top Coat, which is classy.”
NYFW F/W ’15 shows photographed by Tom Newton.