AYMELINE AT RAG & BONE SPRING 2013
It was hot at the Rag & Bone show yesterday. Really hot. So hot that we shared our stash of Tatcha blotting papers with favorite face Aymeline Valade in between playing the whole ‘How Was Your Summer?!’ catch-up game with Gucci, Guido, Jin Soon, and, of course, the model of the moment.
“I’ve been in Aix-en-Provence with my family, and Nice with my friends from high school and university, and skateboarding,” Aymeline said of her vacances, which she spent, you know, starring in six different campaigns and crisscrossing Europe with her Italian paramour. “I know skateboarding is trendy now, but I was skateboarding before, I’m skateboarding all the time…” she said. And what of her face being, well, everywhere? “I’m very happy about all the campaigns. It’s a challenge for a client to choose a girl, because they need a girl who’s going to support the brand well, who can stand for it, and has something interesting to propose. And after all the seasons, now they can see that I’m able to represent these brands well. I think especially nowadays, because there have been so many years of these young 16-year-olds who have a very plain look, designers want the opposite…like an older woman with attitude.” Aymeline laughed, adding, “which makes sense, I am almost twenty-eight, on the 17th of October.”
We commiserated about the heat, and our shared sweaty sheen, though ours was less intentional than that courted by Gucci Westman, who was managing the makeup for the sporty, boy-meets-girl collection with her two adorable tots in tow.
Gucci had us thinking of good old Gwynnie when she told us that the look was “an androgynous ’90s movie star with a beautiful face, with the brow as the star. For the skin, I wanted to avoid anything cosmetic-y feeling, so I did Dr. Hasuchka’s moisturizing mask and then this little Revlon cheek stick—it’s a little baby stick that’s not out yet—and letting the natural lip color come through using this nipple cream, Dr. Lipp’s. It has the right amount of shine. I’m leaving it as raw and minimal as possible with the skin, plus the light out there is daylight and you see everything, so we’re just spot-correcting, that’s it. And then we’re spraying the face with Evian.” So, she was doing the dewy thing? “Well, it’s really hot, too. So it’s working,” Gucci said.
“It’s more of a sweaty thing,” a passing model interjected.
“And yes, thank god we’re not doing matte today,” Gucci added.
Suffice it to say, Rag & Bone was working the sultry climate to their advantage: there was a definite “wet” look happening, a carryover from last spring. Guido Palau was overseeing the manes: “The inspiration we’re really going for is masculine meets feminine, wet meets dry, ’90s minimalism,” he said, raking a layer of Redken’s Hardwear 16 Super Strong Gel over the top of Karlie Kloss’s head before securing it with an initial spritz of Redken’s Forceful 23 Super Strength Finishing Spray. The hair was also very ‘party in the back,’ we thought, with a tumble of looser curls cascading from the back of the crown. Guido added, “We used the Sultra Bombshell Oval Curling Iron; you get a very relaxed wave and then you spray it with the 23 again as you rough it up a bit… so you get a beachy thing going, but it’s hard on top. It’s strong.” Sounds like our type of girl.
Photographed by Emily Weiss at the James Farley Post Office in New York on September 7th, 2012.
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