Fashion Shows : Beauty and Fashion Tech

The Best of Fashion Week: Must Reads From Around the Net

I’m not at fashion week, but I sure am reading a lot about it! Here are some of the best reports out there.

M.A.C. Cosmetics has been sending out face charts from the shows that they did, such as the one pictured from the Doo.Ri show. If you like those, Temptalia is publishing all of them. Plus, you can can see a real life picture of the look in Beauty Addict’s backstage report.

Estee Lauder hosted a number of top beauty bloggers at the company headquarters, with Bobbie Brown in attendance. Read all about it at Beauty’s Spot, or head over to Makeup Minute for a look at Bobbie Brown’s makeup for the Tory Burch show.

I really love feminine neutral makeup and MAC did a great look for the Vincente Villarin show. See it at Beautiful Makeup Search. Also browse that site for more spring looks.

Everyone talks about the clothes at New York Fashion Week, and the makeup comes in a close second. But what about the shoes? Running in Heels has a must read report on the shoes of fashion week!

Second City Style has an interesting list of celebrities such as Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Jessica Alba, and more who attended only one show.

Finally, for much more, take a look at Inside the Tents.

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Dispatches From New York Fashion Week: Must Read Items

I’m not there, but plenty of others are! And they are all putting out some interesting stuff! Here is roundup of some interesting material and good ways to keep track of all that is New York fashion week.

VP of Makeup Artistry for MAC Cosmetics,Gordon E, twittered this from preparation for one of the shows. That is one heck of a lot of liner!

Want to follow MAC artists as they tweet from fashion weeks around the country? Look in the right sidebar for the live widget of their updates. It is quite fun to follow!

In the meantime, the web has been alive with fashion week reports. Here are a few must read sites:

* Follow the impressions of a plus size woman at New York fashion week in documentary form in On the Plus Side: A Fuller Figured Fashion Week Experience at the Style It Website. This is a must see item! Thanks to the Girl-Woman-Beauty-Brains-Blog for brining it to my attention!

* Glam Blush has so much fashion week coverage that you can be kept in info for quite some time.

* A great site that is aggregating a multitude of blogs and websites covering fashion week is Inside the Tents. From blog posts, to photos, to video, to twitter updates, there is so much content available here that it will make your head swim!

* The Beauty of Life is running some nice posts about the makeup and nails from some of the runway shows. Check out reports from shows such as Rosa Cha (I love the nails!) and Abaete (this one has a great look from Stila Cosmetics).

* Visit Spoiled Pretty’s look at makeup from theBalm backstage at the Julie Haus show. I seriously need to try some of their stuff!

I’ll post up some more must reads early in the week!

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Scenes From September: It is Still Summer and I’m Not Going to New York Fashion Week

Welcome to September, the time of year when it is suddenly OK to wear fall colors and not so OK to be sporting those neon pink summer nails. It is the month where the season has not officially changed, but posts abound about fall trends. To confuse the matter, it is also a month of coverage about what spring will bring, thanks to the presence of fashion week in New York City beginning this week and in other cities later this month.

So with that in mind, what do I plan to cover this week and next? Well, I have a few pink summer nail features planned, a reader giveaway, and some miscellaneous product reviews. Yes, I will cover the fall trends sometime this month, and yes, I will keep a bit of an eye on fashion week news, but mostly I am avoiding both until I reach the end of my denial that summer is officially over in the fashion world. So instead of writing about new trends, I am avoiding the fall trend set by the multitude of websites and blogs that will be covering nothing else for the next few weeks. I’m sure that they will do it quite well and I see no real need to duplicate to the process. Instead, I will read the blogs of my friends who are covering the spectacle that is New York fashion week and perhaps point out a few of the best posts. Meanwhile, I will enjoy my period of extended summer in September.

You see, I am not going to New York Fashion Week, and I am OK with that, perhaps even rather glad of it. Earlier this year, I made conflicting travel plans for something much more amazing to me–a vacation. Initially I regretted that I would miss the opportunity to go to New York, but as time went on, I was able to ponder just what it was that I was missing. There would be no expensive plane fare and no bunking up with several strangers to save a few bucks on an outrageously priced hotel room. I would not get the pleasure of waiting for invitations to shows that might never come, or juggling the ones that came scheduled at the same time. There would be no agony over what to wear or how to behave, and I would not be faced with being treated as a second class citizen because I am a blogger. The more I considered it, the less I cared that I was not going to be there. I don’t even cover fashion extensively–I write about makeup, and it is mostly product reviews at that. Thus, on the whole, the expense of New York fashion week is a bit difficult to defend as a business expense. I might visit the nearby Milwaukee fashion week in October instead.

For those of you dying for some fashion week coverage, the Beauty Blog Network Website is running a widget with a feed of its member’s fashion week headlines. I have also included the widget on Beauty and Fashion Tech.

For a few different angles on fashion week, the following are also particularly good reads:

* From the New York Observer: oh Lowly Blogger? Your Seat’s in the Back. Feel gossipy? Take a look at Jossip’s different take on the matter: Fashion Week vs. The Blogs: Kelly Cutrone Plays Hardball. Yes, Fashion Week definitely has its drama.

* From Slate comes the answers to your burning questions that you were afraid to ask. Check out The Fashion Week FAQ and The Fashion Week FAQ Part II. Slate is full of interesting Fashion Week commentary. For more, simply run a search of the term there.

Finally, lest I appear overly cynical about New York fashion week, I must say that I will truly miss the opportunity to meet some wonderful people who I have connected with online through networks such as Splendicity, The Beauty Blog Network, Total Beauty, and Glam Media–all of whom will be providing online coverage of the events quicker and generally more in depth than the print sources–even if the writers get sent to the back row. I also will miss seeing colleagues whom I have met before, but in the end I am happy knowing that I will enjoy reading their coverage of the events while I search out oysters in Boston and lobster in Maine a week later. Keep an eye out for me, I’ll be the one still wearing summer pink nails.

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Christian Siriano Collection Now on Bluefly.com

For all of you Project Runway and Christian Siriano Fans, Christian’s line is now up on Bluefly.

I’m not overly inspired by the $96 T-shirts, but I do really like the pictured black cotton dress.

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Kicking Off Chicago Fashion Week Backstage with M.A.C. Cosmetics

I had the pleasure this past week of meeting up with representatives of M.A.C. Cosmetics and watching M.A.C. senior makeup artist, Konstantine Mironychev in action before the GEN ART Fresh Faces in Fashion show, a show held the evening before the start of Chicago Fashion Week.

Held in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, the show highlighted emerging area designers. For the makeup, Konstantine developed two looks–A Modern 70’s era inspired look, and a smoky eye look. Salon Blonde provided the hair services.

First off, backstage at a fashion show tent is a cramped experience. If you thought such a thing would be high glamor and luxury, think again. Instead, there are numerous models, makeup artists and hair stylists working at once in a rather small area. Nails were being done in the center, and everything was moving at a pretty good pace. It was also a rather warm day, so the tent was a bit on the warm side for the artists and the models.

To get the makeup started, Konstantine performed a demonstration of each look for his assistants, who would later duplicate the looks with each overseen and checked by Konstantine. The assistants were all Chicago based, and well trained. Konstantine told me that he is a rather strict trainer, with high standards, but also happy to witness his artists succeed. As a result each artist in Chicago represented a high level of expertise and quality.

Konstantine described his 70’s era inspired look as a modern version of Debra Harry. Red lips and 70’s eyes and brows, but modernized–no blush or foundation. He began with an application of concealer only where needed and used M.A.C. Mineralize Skinfinish for contour. The eyes were done in brown with large amounts of mascara, and the brows were brushed upwards. The look was finished off with a gorgeous red lip.

Above: Konstantine demonstrates the 70’s inspired look. Below: The finished look:

M.A.C. Gen Art Chicago 70’s Inspired Look

The focus of the second look was a smoky, sultry, multi-textured eye. For this look, Konstantine began with a base of one of my favorite products, a painterly paint pot, in a light brown shade. From there, he created a dark brown corner and applied a silvery black from the smoke signals collection around the lash line. The inside rim of the eyelids were lined. The eye was finished off with a bit of mascara. There was no blush and the look included a nude lip using a shade from an upcoming collection. This look was all about the eye! It was gorgeous, and unfortunately doesn’t really show as well as I would like in my photo (below).

M.A.C. Gen Art Chicago Fashion Week Smoky Eye Look

Talking with Konstantine and Heather Park, M.A.C.’s Manager of Global Communications, I learned that M.A.C. utilizes items from upcoming collections for shows well ahead of release. This allows the company to use input from the artists and re-blend or reformulate products as needed. At the Gen Art show, the artists had available lip products from a future collection.

When asked about upcoming trends, Konstantine stated that the modern 70’s inspired look continues to be in style. When he was in New York and other areas this fall, he observed that gold or silver also remained popular with metallic “eye bling” seen as an accessory at many shows.

I asked about regional trends, curious if anything is done differently for a Midwestern show. Konstantine explained that nothing is particularly changed regionally. Trends develop from across various shows, resulting from the communications among the makeup artists and the designers. Each designer takes what he or she likes from various traits for their collection. Thus, the current looks are not particularly regionally based.

I also got a sneak peak at some of the items from M.A.C.’s upcoming holiday collections, including some gorgeous mineralize eyeshadows, a deep red shimmery lipglass that makes me want to try to break out of my fear of dark colors, and an interesting nail polish set consisting of a white polish, and if I understood correctly, a gold polish that will crackle when applied on top of it. I have them and will give them a try soon. So stay tuned!

Shop for M.A.C. Cosmetics

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