Every day for two weeks, we send beauty writer and punishment sucker Lindsay MacAdam to one Toronto fashion show. She’ll go backstage to get step-by-step instructions from a makeup pro, then follow them herself, delivering each time a verdict: do, or don’t, try this look at home. First up? “Kate Lanphear goes to the pool,” la Greta Constantine.
At the show: Models looked simultaneously rough and beautiful—say, like an overworked fashion editor with a champagne hangover. The hair was a bit greasy at the roots, with perfectly kinked ends; the eyes, weathered from exhaustion; the skin, contrastingly dewy.
For hair, the inspiration was air-dried waves after a day of water and sun, but refreshed slightly for an evening out. The L’Oral Professionnel team began by combing in some Tecni.art Hot Style Constructor and parting hair to one side. A flat iron made for loose, imperfect waves, starting half way down the head and letting go just before the ends. Finally, Texture Expert Lumi Controle added a high-gloss shine to the roots, while Mythic Oil nourished the ends.
For the face, ELLE style director and resident cool girl Kate Lanphear—with her bare skin and pale, shadowed eyes—was the inspiration. But M.A.C’s Senior Artist Melissa G. was determined to put a Greta Constantine spin on it: “I wanted to add my feeling of the Greta style, which is really expensive skin, so we spent a lot of time working on the skin, making it really velvety in texture and adding creamy, slightly frosted highlights.”
Melissa used Cream Color Base in Shell to highlight the cheekbones and the temples, and in Root around the eye, a little heavier underneath to achieve that raw Lanphear look. She combed brows upward and enhanced them with a coloured mascara where needed, while leaving eyelashes bare and straight. For the lip, she used concealer to soften the outline, then stippled on some balm, followed by the cream highlight in Shell.
At home: It’s easy to replicate this look, but hard to get used to my face sans mascara. I can’t quite figure out why I ended up looking more post-mortem than fresh and edgy—one of life’s little mysteries, I suppose. Note to self: Brown eyeshadow bags do not a Lanphear make.
Verdict: Try it at home, but maybe with a brighter colour round the eye—a pool-blue, maybe?—to avoid looking like a floater.
