For a 9 a.m. show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, the backstage beauty crew needs to be fresh faced and on their game before most of us have even hot the snooze button. Energy is key for an early a.m. call, and the backstage area for Ruffian was teeming with just that. We may have been yawning behind our Starbucks but key artist for MAC Cosmetics, James Kaliardos, was ready to discuss his makeup look which featured an eye-popping fiery red lip. How’s that for a wake-up call?
“We’re spotlighting and previewing and showcasing the new MAC Ruffian Red lipstick that the (Ruffian designers Brian Wolk and Claude Morais) made all by themselves. It’s a great red and MAC has so many reds but this one is really different and it’s beautifully more on the orange side. But it’s not orange. It’ s a real perfect, pure beautiful red. Their inspiration was British estate with Henry Moore sculptures and girls like Catherine Deneuve and Isabella Johnny and they’re into 80’s French style.”
“And so they made this beautiful collection of solid, real clothes—blazers, trenches made out of out of focus tweeds. Luxurious, silky blouses and great, pleated high-waisted pants. So we really just wanted to do something classic but to me, the new MAC eyeshadow called Day Gleam which is a pressed pigment which is this really new technology of reflective flakes that look really wet. To me, that’s updating the sort of classic nude face against the red lip. It’s like adding metal bits to your eye. As opposed to a sparkly eye, it looks more wet, which is where the bronze-y Henry Moore sculpture element comes in. We’re also sort of subtly contouring the eye with the Always Sunny, which is a contour around the eye just to deepen it a little bit. And brown mascara, which I never use. But for today I didn’t want the sort of 40’s lashy Hollywood look, I wanted it to be subtler and softer but still with some definition. I’ve never used brown mascara in my life though.”
For the face we used the Cream Colour Base in Pearl for a pearl-finished highlight. I powdered the center but the rest is perfected with Match Master foundation. So we’re matching the skin color but we’re also contouring and highlighting and playing with these Cream Colour Bases which allow you to add a little bit of odd skin tone in certain places, which I like. I don’t like using one skin tone on the whole face.
As for the new MAC velvet nails that everyone was buzzing about, (made exclusively for the Ruffian show), Kaliardos said, “The nails are so cool! The fact that they’re velvet, I think that’s so cool. They’re purple and blue and red, which match the Ruffian red lip. I love these new innovations in makeup today. like the nails and the new texture on the eye, I just think it’s so great. I’m excited to be working with these new ideas right now.”
That seemed the perfect cue to step over to Keri Blair, senior artist for MAC who was in charge of the sleek velvet nail look. She told us how the nails were really a collaboration between MAC and Ruffian, keeping in step with the show’s theme of an urban woman going home to visit her family in the English countryside. Blair said they wanted the nails to be evident of luxurious, almost regal lifestyle, since there’s not much one can do with velvet nails on their hands. “They’re just about putting them on and being fabulous. They’re for you and about you.” Blair said. Also, they wanted to achieve a new status of the nail as being an accessory on par with a hand bag or jewelry. It’s the final touch for a complete package. Blair mentioned that while nail art has become more and more popular with everything from glitter to feathers covering them, this particular texture had never been done before. And the red matched the Ruffian Red lipstick perfectly. Clearly, the future of runway beauty is literally at our “fingertips”.
-Alia Rajput
Photo Source: Second City Style
