Spring Beauty | Style & Inspiration

Sand, flesh, taupe—whatever you want to call it, the nail color that cropped up on many a fingertip at the Spring 2011 collections. Along with go-to barely-there shades like NARS Candy Darling and Butter London’s Yummy Mummy, Deborah Lippmann’s Naked - look so tender. And Essie’s Sand Tropez is a warm limestone that will no doubt prove to be an easy transition for all you greige devotees. I looove this nude colours for Spring 2011.

 

The limited collection includes:

- Soho de Chanel Palette

- Quadra Eye Shadow Palette

- Le Vernis Nail Lacquers

- Rouge Coco Lip Color

- Rouge Allure Lacquer

The 'Soho Story' will be available online at September 7th and in the Soho boutique at September 10th Visit Chanel.com

As pointed out by our intrepid runway reporter, Tim Blanks, Karl Lagerfeld was in the mood for light at his Chanel Spring Couture presentation this afternoon, mandating gossamer fabrics, shimmering beads, and dresses with noticeable flow. The inspiration he gave the house’s global creative director of makeup, Peter Philips, followed suit. “It’s a real treat,” he said of the peachy highlighter-cum-eye shadow that was created specifically for the show.

Backstage at Elie Saab’s Spring Couture presentation today, it all started with Grace Kelly. “She was never too overdone, and Elie wanted the girls to look very young and fresh,” hair guru Orlando Pita said of the “wholesome” side-slung chignons he created by prepping strands with his signature T3 Plump before drying, side-parting, and fashioning a loose braid behind the ear, which he tucked into itself. “It’s supposed to look effortless,” he added. That’s not necessarily a word we’d use to describe the late Princess of Monaco’s always put-together appearance, but MAC senior vice president Gordon Espinet clarified, “It wasn’t about making the girls look like her; it was more about making them look fabulous without a lot of fuss.

 Guido Palau’s middle-parted “inverted roll,” which he introduced at YSL back in October and revisited in a new, braided incarnation at Valentino Couture last week, would become the frontrunner for hairstyle of the season. The look—which starts with a center part and involves coating strands with a gel, like Redken’s Hardwear 16 Super Strong gel mixed with its Glass 01 serum, before a meticulous rolling and tucking process ensues—has also popped up in the pages of Numéro #120 and the March edition of Vogue Nippon, courtesy of Bumble and Bumble’s Laurent Philippon and hairstylist Franco Gobbi, respectively.


















Look at Jennifer Lopez's gorgeous shiny hair, she inked with L’Oréal to become the face of its newly-launched EverSleek Frizz Taming Créme Serum. For those who have long gone to extreme measures in the name of smooth hair—pressing it beneath burning irons, subjecting it to harsh chemical straighteners, and sometimes even succumbing to toxic keratin treatments—this latest innovation is a much mellower alternative. This Serum it's about $6 a bottle. Don’t be fooled by the expensive glam squads that she’s got; she’s still Jenny from the block. :)

The concept of the “magic pen” isn’t new, as anyone familiar with Yves Saint Laurent’s legendary Touche Eclat highlighting product is well aware. But seeing as there’s always room for more in our beauty tool box, we’d like to take a moment to welcome Clarins’ Instant Smooth Line Correcting Concentrate to the party. Swipe it across the T-zone and along the sides of the nose to lessen redness and fill in enlarged pores; or mix it with your go-to eye cream to prolong its benefits and diminish the appearance of fine lines.

Lovers of Marc Jacobs Daisy, prepare to be dazzled. Last summer, the designer debuted a limited-edition pop-art flacon of his FIFI Award-winning violet leaf, wild strawberry, jasmine, and vanilla eau, and now, he’s developed something special for spring: Daisy is so Fresh.







 

 Cate Blanchett wore a masculine tailored tuxedo look (black jacket, white shirt, and white pants) paired with—get this—a glossy, warm fuchsia lip. In any other instance and on any other woman, the call here would be a red mouth—even a mandarin in these days of orange lip love.  MAC lipstick in Cockney from its new Stylishly Yours collection is a good, more magenta bet for duplication, or try Maybelline’s Color Sensational Lipstick in Coral Crush. What do you think of her off-kilter color selection?

In September, barrettes where seen at Paris Fashion Week. They made a strong showing at Cynthia Rowley, Carolina Herrera, Prabal Gurung, and Badgley Mischka, but it was their cameo at Rodarte that gave us the strongest heart palpitations. There, slid into texturized, deep side parts, 1960’s schoolgirl style, were handmade clips courtesy of Kate and Laura Mulleavy. Fast-forward to last week, and every major online fashion outlet there is was noting how Gisele Bündchen rocked the look with a head-to-toe Prada ensemble on the February cover of Vogue China.

Beauty Essentials Spring 2011

“We’re doing seventies but with a chic, contemporary twist,” makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury told us backstage, where she was channeling “dramatic luxury” with a palette of rich peach and lavender. To ensure skin had a honeyed hue, Tilbury dusted MAC’s Mineralize Powder over cheekbones and up into temples to bronze and contour, while placing touches of champagne pigment onto the high planes of the face for added polish. Eschewing brushes, Tilbury used her fingers to blend MAC’s Paint Stick in French Violet around eyes in a retro oval shape, which she contrasted with peachy cheeks and a creamy wash of terra-cotta slicked across lips, courtesy of MAC’s Cremesheen Lipstick in Shy Girl.

ETRO backstage beauty spring 2011

You could not ask for a more beautiful retrospective than the sleek, polished look makeup artist Pat McGrath and coif master Luigi Murenu churned out for the occasion. Coating models’ hair with John Frieda Frizz Ease Serum. McGrath focused her attention on dewy skin, using CoverGirl’s as-yet-unreleased NatureLuxe Silk foundation (which she debuted backstage at Anna Sui) and a glossy eye, courtesy of a slick of Elizabeth Arden’s Eight Hour Cream on top of metallic brown eye shadow. Finishing touches came in the form of CoverGirl’s LashBlast Fusion mascara and MAC Lacquer in Shirelle, a cherry red varnish applied to fingers and pedicured toes, which peeped out of crushed velvet and gold python strappy stilettos.                                                                                   GUCCI backstage beauty spring 2011

To keep the lips the focal point, the face painter lined lids with a neutral shade of Chanel’s Le Crayon Yeux in Brun, a few slashings of its Inimitable Intense Mascara, and a dusting of its Joues Contraste Powder Blush in Rose Pétale on cheeks for a healthy flush. Hairstylist Sam McKnight kept with the graphic theme by adding long extensions to most models’ manes and blunt-cutting them on site for linear fluidity. A few spritzes of L’Oréal’s Elnett hair spray added a touch of texture to tresses, so with every step of those please-oh-please-let-those-be-produced wedges, hair swung in uniform motion.

FENDI backstage beauty spring 2011

The hairstylist decided to re-create Grace Kelly look like on her wedding day. Pulling hair into high ponytails before weaving it through “rats” (mesh doughnuts used to give hair fullness and height) and spritzing with his T3 Control Heat-Seeking Hair Spray to hold. Working a “fab eye” into the royal coming-out party, finger-blending the bright green shade from Revlon’s ColorStay 12 Hour Eyeshadow Quad in Silver Fox with its Matte Eyeshadow in Venetian Blue. One thing did hark back to the designer’s classic, ladylike aesthetic, though; a de la Renta princess is tattoo-free.

Oscar De La Renta backstage beauty spring-2011


With all of the seventies-era, free-flowing, middle-parted tresses on the Spring runways, we’re leaning toward losing our asymmetrical bob and regrowing our locks past the shoulders.  “Pull a few pieces out around the face for softness,” Palau recommends, to give the whole thing a more natural effect. It remains to be seen how our “to cut, or not to cut” dilemma will resolve itself, and until we sort it out, we’ll continue to neglect making an appointment with our stylist for a much-overdue trim. What about you?

hair cuts spring 2011

Braids were sort of a big deal at the Spring 2010 shows, showing up in long, over-the-shoulder incarnations (Alexander Wang, Miu Miu), milkmaid crowns (Oscar de la Renta), and half-up, half-down fishtails (Doo.Ri) for most of the season.

“The color came from the black-white-green French garden that was re-created in the Grand Palais,” Philips, Chanel’s global creative director of makeup, told us. Hence the luminous, emerald-tinged onyx shade from the brand’s Les 4 Ombres Quadra Eye Shadow in Regard Perle that he dragged up to the brow bone and underneath the lower lash line. The resulting “glow” was meant to mimic the black, gray, and white pearls in the presentation’s bounty of costume jewelry.

                                                         CHANEL details spring 2011

NARS’ new Vintage Nail Polishes, which include five totally obsession-forming discontinued shades that have been reissued for a limited time by popular demand. Mash, which bowed in ‘96 in tribute to the Korean War film and TV series of the same name, is an appropriate shade of metallic army green. King Kong, Zulu, and Midnight Express, three other ‘96 releases with cinematic roots, offer copper, dark forest green, and deep navy options, respectively. And Full Metal Jacket, a lacquered homage to Kubrick’s Vietnam classic, is a pewter chrome that originally hit shelves in ‘98.

Guido Palau is a hair genius. For Spring 2011 alone, he has been responsible for the season-defining seventies frizz at Marc Jacobs, the gelled-up finger waves at Prada, and the platinum blond craze, which he ignited at Balenciaga and which will likely persevere through much of next year. But after our fair share of seasons charting Palau’s backstage triumphs, we noticed something: When the coif master likes something, he keeps with it.
At Lanvin, Palau referenced “scuba” when slicking back what appeared to be water-saturated low ponytails (turns out Redken’s Hardwear 16 Super Strong gel can impressively simulate deep-sea diving). With only three days of shows left, it’s unclear if we’ll see yet another incarnation of the “damp” look, but all signs point to yes.

                                                          Guido Palau wet hair spring 2011

The thirties-style finger waves that Guido Palau perfected backstage at Prada for the amfAR Milano fête, eschewing the coif master’s low-slung chignons for a single ballerina bun in back. Makeup artist Pat McGrath’s theatrical chrome eye and androgynous brows from the show were noticeably missing—purposely, we presume—but Heidi Klum’s side-parted, hand-sculpted ridges were a dead ringer for Miuccia Prada’s Josephine Baker-inspired beauty look. When in Rome—or Milan, as the case may be. Would you wear it?

Not so long ago, we lived for barrettes. In seventh grade, it was plastic baby clips in the mold of ducks, birds, and other similarly infantile shapes, and then it was barrettes of the multicolored, mini-sized Goody variety, which have since been discontinued and which we buy in bulk should we happen upon them at an outdated pharmacy.