The Macgraw women is etheral, whimsical and effortlessly beautiful. The same can be said of the quintessentially Parisian Lancôme woman, thus the two aligning seamlessly at Tuesday morning’s Macgraw Resort runway.
“Lancôme’s signature is really, really beautiful skin,” the brand’s National Makeup Director Lara Srokowski told me in the ballroom of the Swifts Mansion, the only neo-gothic revival mansion left in Sydney, ahead of the morning’s sun drenched outdoor runway show.
To create the Macgraw look, Lara sought the hydrating powers of Lancôme’s iconic Absolue L’Extrait Essence. “Lancôme has its own Lancôme Rose, cultivated in 1973, and the rose mist has been created from those rose stem cells. We’ve used the toner throughout this look to keep hydrating and refreshing the skin.
“We’ve followed that up with an application of our Advanced Genefique, working that into the skin with the Genefique devices to give the skin a boost of luminosity.”
Skin preparation is as important as the makeup application itself to Lara, who tells me that rather than using lots of foundation the focus is on prepping the skin properly. “To prime, I wanted it to be super hydrating and keep everything looking really healthy. We’ve mixed some of the glow drops into the primer, which gave the skin even more luminosity, and that’s been applied to the high points of the face.” The effect is a luminosity that peeks through the foundation- the illusion of a lit from within glow.
“The foundation we’ve used has just been really, really minimal,” says Lara. “We’ve buffed it over the skin, only over the areas that really need it. We’ve used Ultra Wear, which is a medium to full coverage foundation, but to create the illusion of a second skin we’ve mixed in the Custom Glow Drops. This has given it a much finer texture and that bit more luminosity.” The Glow Drops have then been applied over the foundation to draw the light to certain areas of the face.
“The cheeks are really subtle,” Lara explains. “We’ve only done the slightest contour and then we’ve buffed it out, so it’s created the illusion of a natural cheekbone and a soft, subtle flush of colour.
Eye makeup has been kept subtle, with each model wearing the same medium brown shadow from the Beige Brulee palette. “We’ve just used the one shade on the eye, but to keep it really blended we used the same bronzer that we used on the skin as an eye transition colour.” The eye look is completed with brushed up, feathered brows and a coat of Hypnôse Mascara on the top lashes only.
“For the lips, we’ve created our own custom Macgraw shade. To do this, we mixed two shades of L’Absolu Rouge Cream together– 254 which is Creme de Marron and 397 Berry Noir. The latter is more of a plum colour, so when we mix to two together we get this really beautiful, rich, Burgundy shade. The way we’ve used this on the lip, rather than as a full on lip colour, we’ve used it as a lip stain. We’ve used our ring finger to press it in, keeping the colour in the centre to achieve a gradient effect on the lips.”
To finish the Macgraw look, each model’s skin has been misted once more with the Absolue L’Extrait rose mist.
