Runway Alert: Natural and Fresh

The so-called "natural" look is always a runway favorite for Summer. It's hot and balmy, so who wants colorful eye makeup melting all over the place? But often this look requires more product and precision than the more dramatic looks like the smoky eye. The runway makeup artists NEVER send a model down the runway with just some moisturizer and chap-stick. People look at these models and think that they must just be naturally perfect, and though they are admittedly gorgeous women, even they need a lot of prep to look "naturally" perfect. Case in point was the Spring 2010 Gucci show. Famed runway makeup artist Pat McGrath did the girls' makeup for the show.

Here's how you can recreate this look at home:  Start with a good mattifying foundation primer like one of the ones I suggest in my Prime Time article (Korres, Smashbox, Arbonne, Loreal, and Hourglass all make good ones).  Then apply your foundation of choice.

Next, groom and define the eyebrows with a little brow gel.  I like the tinted brow gel from Anastasia, but Anastasia also makes a clear brow gel if you prefer.  To get the Gucci look shown above, try brushing your brows upward a bit with the gel brush.  You want your brows to look full and defined, but natural.  So avoid dark brow gels or heavy brow pencils and powders.

For the cheeks, dust a sheer fuchsia (trust me on this one) blush lightly and high on the cheekbones (this is the technique McGrath used at Gucci and it gives a more modern youthful look than applying the blush to the apples).  My favorite fuchsia blush from Anna Sui has tragically been discontinued, so I suggest using MAKE UP FOR EVER's blush powder in No. 26, a very sheer bright pinkish fuchsia.  You could also use a hot pink/raspberry shade like MAC's Dollymix powder blush.  I promise that this will look natural.  The key is to use very sparingly by patting your brush just once in the blush and tapping off all excess.  Then use a very light hand to apply the blush to the high cheekbones in a slow circular motion.  You don't want any defined edges, so if you get too much blush on or find that it's looking striped, use a clean blush brush to blend as much as possible and then use a powder brush to apply loose powder over the blush, blending it.  Once you get used to using just a tiny amount of product and a very light hand, this fuchsia blush trick will become a fast favorite.

For the eyes, apply a good eyeshadow base (Benefit's Stay Don't Stray in my favorite) to the entire lid.  Then apply a light matte skintone shade to the lid and browbone.  I use MAC's Orb personally, which is a pale bone color.  You want to use something just one shade lighter than your skin to add some brightness and definition to the eye area.  Next, use a dark brown liquid liner like Loreal's Lineur Intense in Earthen Rock Brown.  To keep the line very fine, either wipe the excess off the liner brush or better yet, use a separate clean liner brush to apply as little product as possible.  The easiest way to get a clean straight line is to take your liquid liner brush and point it directly at the eye and make tiny dots right in between the lashes.  Then slowly and precisely connect the dots.  Next, sweep a medium matte taupe eyeshadow across the crease and under the lower lashline to add subtle contour.  NARS eyeshadow single in Blondie is a great medium taupe shade for this look.  Finally, add a coat of a lengthening dark brown mascara like Covergirl's Lashblast Length mascara in Black Brown.

The final touch for this look is a light pink lip balm like Korres's lip butter in Plum, which gives he lips a really sheer moist lavender-berry finish, or the same formula in Jasmine, which is a very sheer natural pink.  The shea butter in the Korres lip butters will give your lips a healthy moist look and feel, like that achieved in the pictures of the Gucci show above.  You could also line your lips with a very light nude lip pencil for extra definition.  Josie Maran makes a good one called Natural.  I'm also a fan of the smooth lip pencils from NARS, and NARS makes a nude lip pencil called Morocco. 

Those are the steps to the natural look.  Once you do it once or twice, it's a breeze to get ready in the morning.

Eyeliner by L'Oreal

Runway Alert: Renaissance Inspired Luxe

At the Fall 2010 Nanette Lepore show, MAC makeup artists went for a striking two-tone magenta and burgundy lip with a heavily-lined smoky eye.  This look certainly isn't for everyday, but it's a fun and trendy night look.  Here's how to recreate the look:  apply a nude eyeshadow base, like MAC's Paint Pot in Painterly.  Then take MAC's Eye Kohl in Smolder (or any other great easily blendable soft black eyeliner) and line the inner rims of the eye together with the top lashline.  Then, smudge the liner bit, particularly around the outer corners.  For a softer look, you could use a charcoal wet/dry eyeshadow with a wet angled liner brush to achieve the same effect.  I recommend Bare Escentuals loose eyeshadow in Wearable Stone Dark for a great blendable charcoal shadow.

Keep the cheeks soft and understated with a hint of bronzer or a soft rosy-nude blush like Smaskbox's Bare (shimmery) or Estee Lauder's Desert (matte).  Then line the top lip with MAC's Magenta lipliner (you could also use a nude lipliner like NARS Morocco, as I prefer to do with bright lipcolors), and fill it in with a magenta or fuchsia lipstick like MAC's Utter Fun or Love Forever (the latter shade was used during the Lepore show but won't release until September 2010).  Next, fill in the entire lower lip with MAC's Burgundy lipliner.  The MAC makeup artists then mixed two lipstick shades: Odyssey and Charred Red, and then layered that over the Burgundy lipliner.  This created a bright creamy ruby look on the lower lip.  I think you can get the same effect with a single lipstick, like Illamasqua's Box, a matte deep ruby red.  Or you can just use Odyssey alone over the Burgundy for a slightly more daring purple-based lower lip.  In either case, I think that the slight contrast between the lower and upper lip provides some visual interest.  It's a fabulous runway and photo shoot look, but you can also pull it off for a night on the town.
 

Runway Alert: Red-Orange Matte Lipstick

Of all the Fall 2010 runway makeup looks, I think that this look at Vena Cava is one of the versatile.  You can wear it now and later.  It's the cleanness of the rest of the face that makes this bright lipstick look so modern.  I recreated this look at home by taking my favorite bronzer, Estee Lauder's Bronze Goddess and sweeping it along the hairline and cheek bones for a lightly bronzed look.  After shaping the brows with some Anastasia brow gel and priming the eyelids with some of Benefit's Stay Don't Stray eye primer, I used a flat brush to apply MAC eyeshadow in Orb (a light matte nude-beige).  I then added a subtle shimmery highlight to the brow bone with Stila's Kitten eyeshadow (a pale golden champagne).  After that, I used a tapered crease brush to apply a bit of the bronzer to the crease and blended upward and outward along the top of the crease in the shape of the natural arch of the brow.  I finished with some brown volumizing mascara, CoverGirl's Lashblast Volume in Black Brown.  I use black brown mascara instead of true brown because I have darker hair and eyebrows, but blondes would look better with a true brown mascara.  Then I prepped my lips with a little Rosebud lip balm and lined them with a nude lipliner, NARS Morocco.

This is one of my best tips for pulling off bright lipstick: always use lipliner, but do not use a matching shade.  Instead, use a light fleshy nude.  It will give your lips the proper shape and keep your bright color from bleeding, but it won't leave that garish bright ring around your lips as your lipstick wears.  I also feel that no matter how bright your lipstick, you can always see a bright lipliner and that demarcation looks old-fashioned, which is why I only use two lipliners for all my lipsticks.  One is a very light rosy lip-toned pink for my cool toned lipsticks, and the other is my nude lipliner for my warm toned lipsticks and my brights.

After shaping my lips with the liner, I added the big finish: Illamasqua's lipstick in Ignite, a very matte red-orange. Illamasqua is a relatively new U.K. brand inspired by 1920's Berlin, and it delivers on the bright matte lipsticks. Their formula is very long-wearing and creamy, and their color selection is full of dramatic high impact options as well as the everyday. I also tried this same look with a favorite Estee Lauder vibrant matte magenta-berry lipstick that has tragically been discontinued. It's a great look that again, emphasizes a bright lip but comes off as very modern and polished. Illamasqua makes two shades that are very similar to mine: Resist is on the berry side and Welt is a bit more violet-fuchsia. Both would look great with this simple lightly bronzed look, and I think this look is fabulous for the Summer as well as the Fall.

Face Bronzer by Estee Lauder