by Catherine Piercy
THE CREDITS:
Makeup: Tom Pecheux for M.A.C.
Hair: Paul Hanlon
THE LOOK:
MAKEUP: It was Consuelo Castiglioni’s accessories—the heel of two-tone caramel-and-white oxford print shoes; the leather of a slim terra-cotta convertible clutch—that inspired Tom Pecheux’s graphic wing of burnt-orange liner on the eyes, which he paired with a semi-erased mouth that seemed to vanish around the outer edges. “This is Marni. You need a little bit of concept, no?” he said playfully.
HAIR: You could practically hear the wind whipping through Paul Hanlon’s deconstructed French twists, licking their wispy flyaway strands out of place and leaving them swirling, gravity-less, just above the head. His team prepped models, but it was Hanlon who finished each girl himself, massaging the hair into a state of disarray with his hands. “Jackie O gone wrong,” he said of the bouffant-inspired style. “If she’s the kind of woman that goes to get her hair done every week, then this is the day before she’s due at the salon. She’s been sleeping on it for a week; the wind has gotten into it. It’s that beautiful fifties hair, but completely destroyed.”
THE TOOLS:
SKIN: Pecheux massaged a calming blend of essential oils into the skin with his hands before setting to work, giving bleary eyed models one more reason to doze in their chairs on the heels of a 7 a.m. call time. After smoothing M.A.C. MixMaster foundation over the face, he powdered it lightly for a natural matte texture. “She’s a young woman, but grown up, with a bit of a sixties flair,” he said of the smooth, finished skin.
EYES: A full, strong brow “is a nice way to make the face powerful without using color,” said Pecheux, who used pencils and powders to shade arches into a heightened shade of brown. He used an angled brush to line the upper lashes with a sharp, creamy wing of coppery orange (a blend of M.A.C. Select Cover-Up Color Corrector in Terracotta and Caramel). To create a slightly surreal effect, he traced the lower lids with a snow white crayon (M.A.C. Eye Pencil in Fascinating), blending the color downward “so it almost looks like it’s melting.” The effect, seen from the runway, was the illusion of a preternatural brightness, “a freshness, rather than anything too abstract,” he said.
LIPS: Using the same foundation he used on the face, Pecheux erased only the edges of the mouth. The effect, finished with a dab of balm, “is a soft pop of pink at the center of the mouth, where the natural lip color comes through,” he explained.
HAIR: If Pecheux’s massage lulled models into a light sleep, Hanlon’s iPod woke them up again. Model Valerija Kelava nodded to a sound track of Prince while Hanlon worked his magic, blowing her hair out with Tigi Queen for a Day Thickening Spray, and then teasing it before pinning it into a haphazard French twist with the top sections pulled free. He blasted the hair with L’Oréal Elnett hair spray while rubbing sections between his fingers for a believably tousled look. If it appeared spontaneous from the front row, however, it wasn’t. “No!” Hanlon cried in mock despair at the sight of models clustered around a vent blowing cool air onto their finished coifs in the overheated backstage space, before dragging them back to his chair for a retouch.