Makeup artist Val Garland has worked with Giambattista Valli for many years now, so it’s safe to say she knows his girl by heart: “Dewy, expensive, quality skin, with rosy cheeks,” she noted. Even so, the designer proved he is not above throwing the occasional curveball. “This season, he told me he wanted a bit of drama,” Garland said. Enter the strong black line. “Gambattista’s woman is very Parisian—she’s a little bit cocky; she’s very sure of herself. She might wake up and not really care about how she looks because she has so much confidence,” Garland noted backstage before the show. In order to create a counterpoint to the designer’s soft, Monet-inspired clothing, Garland created a modern, graphic eye. “Instead of that couture fifties flick, we’ve made it a lot stronger and blockier,” she said. She worked using not one liner but two, starting with a black cream from MAC followed by a powder formula. “The first one is easy to apply, and the second gives it hold,” she explained. She finished with “lashings and lashings of mascara.” A barely there beige mouth courtesy of Lip Eraser rounded out the face and kept the emphasis on the eyes.
When it came to the tresses, Valli asked hair guru Orlando Pita to keep things straightforward and simple. “Giambattista said he wanted the hair to [appear] as though the girls had just run their fingers through it,” he explained. Pita blew hair dry with Schwarzkopf OSiS+ Volume spray, and brought texture to smooth strands with Dust It powder. Next, he curled a few sections in back before tousling them—ultimately securing the hair with several strategically placed pins and finishing the look with “not too much hair spray.” He said of the end result: “It’s supposed to look luxurious but not madame.”
—Tina Isaac-Goizé, Style.com
