London Fashion Week: Making up is hard to do

Published on Tuesday 23 February 2010 18:08

BEAUTY, glamour, grace … the moment the curtains part and a model walks down the catwalk, all we see is what the designer wants us to see. She is the swan on the surface, gliding effortlessly across the glassy lake, while underneath, behind the scenes, the picture is rather more chaotic.

• Picture: Getty

"Backstage is not a glamorous environment," says Lynsey Alexander, senior make-up artist with MAC. "People are getting stood on, you're putting plasters on horrible models' gammy feet. It really is a different world."

True enough: an hour before kick-off at Jonathan Saunders' London Fashion Week show, it's bedlam. Twenty-five models – some still to turn up, since the previous show is running late – ten make-up artists, the same number of hairdressers, numerous journalists, photographers and hangers-on are milling around the cramped, baking hot backstage area.

The challenge is to transform these tired, bored-looking girls into the elegant creatures we see on the runway. "The models are all knackered, they've been up all night, they've had make-up on and off a hundred times," says Alexander. "Sometimes when they come in they have red eyes, greasy hair, bruises all over their body, feet falling apart because of the shoes, and your job is to make them look airbrushed. It does take a lot of skill. They don't look like the girls when you open a magazine."

But with all that primping and preening, tempers can sometimes get frayed. "The poor girls are so young, some of them have just left home, they've come over from the Czech Republic and they don't speak a lot of English. They're getting pulled around so at some point they're going to crack – someone's pulling their hair too tight or their eyes are really sore because they've had so much make-up on. You just have to be a bit sympathetic. I try to give the girls a bit of a massage – the quicker and more painless you can make it the better the relationship."

Half an hour before showtime, there's a brief moment of calm backstage as the models, fully made up but still with pins and curlers in their hair, and wearing their "civvies" (generally a uniform of biker boots and the skinniest of skinny jeans), do a run-through out front – a kind of undressed rehearsal to ensure the look works under the bright overhead lights of the Brick Lane venue.

As the music pumps out of the speakers, a hairdresser grabs a Danish pastry, a model rolls up a cigarette, a make-up artist catches up on her texts – then suddenly it's madness again as the models return for a last-minute touch-up and removal of hairnets before finally putting the clothes on.

All this is the culmination of hundreds of man-hours. Days before a show, Alexander meets with the designer, stylist and hairdresser to come up with the final look. "That can take four or five hours, depending on whether the designer has a strong idea of the direction they want to take it. It's all about creating a character, it's an escapism of sorts. Is this girl a punk from the 1980s, a young girl from Africa?

"Last year at Kenzo in Paris it was a very Amazonian back-story, a bit tribal, so I'm not going to go in there and start doing false eyelashes and lipgloss and glamorous make-up. You have to make it a bit more exotic and mysterious.

"There's a lot of trial and error," she adds. "You might do something you love and the designer hates. The designer might ask you to do something that you think will look terrible, so it's all about a compromise and a relationship building process."

Fortunately, the 26-year-old from Dumfries has an excellent relationship with her fellow Scots in London – a growing army that includes Jonathan Saunders, Christopher Kane and Louise Gray. "I think for so long it's been about London and that circuit," says Alexander. "When Stella McCartney was doing her final year design show there were a lot of young English designers and it's great that we have a chance to showcase Scottish talent. It's about a dream. It shows other people that if you really want something, you can have it."

However, the stress of the job means she has little time to stop for breath, let alone eat sometimes. "Each show you'll do three to four models, so over three shows it'll be nine to ten models. Normally in a studio environment it'll take around an hour to do a model, but backstage that time is halved.

"Your personal life goes out the window and eating just doesn't happen. You have to look after yourself and I always try to have a bag of nuts on hand."

The look for this Saunders show is 1930s cool, preppy girl – naturally up-brushed, bushy brows, lightly flushed cheeks and nude, pinky lips – and as the run-through is a success it's all systems go. The day before, at Christopher Kane, it didn't go so smoothly, and Alexander had to change the make-up with just ten minutes to spare.

The look had been boyishly healthy, with natural, glossy lips – Kane never likes his models in too much make-up. But the bright overhead lights of the Covent Garden venue proved too strong for the understated image and more colour was hastily applied – a peachy blush and golden eyes – to bring out their features and ensure they didn't look like corpses.

At Pringle of Scotland's show, in the Serpentine Gallery, Knightsbridge, there was a similar handsome feel to the make-up. Inspired by sepia photographs, it was a muted palette of camel, chocolate and brown, with fresh, dewy skin. There were no hard lines – no mascara even – to bring an edge to the tonal effect. As with clothes make-up colours and trends filter on to the high street as we echo the looks from the catwalk.

"We saw this caramel colour showing up a lot in New York – caramel brown lips, cheeks, eyes – it's a natural look that is still quite structured, almost the colour of a golden suntan," says Gordon Espinet, global vice president of make-up artistry at MAC.

In contrast to this "naked" face, there was a profusion of red lips on the catwalk models – in all its shades, from dark, gothic red at Sass & Bide and Charles Anastase to bright cherry at Mary Katrantzou.

"But not red nails," adds Espinet, "though there were a lot of dark nails – green, black, blue. And people are experimenting with textures, so we're seeing matt nails, or iridescent."

Another trend to finally fall by the wayside is the tan. "We're not seeing tans at all. For three seasons it has started to disappear but now it has gone completely."

Most dramatic of all the looks for autumn/winter has been strong brows – Louise Gray painted them bright blue in her runway show. And, for those tired of all the doom-mongering in the news of late, there is the unashamed sparkle effect. "I can't believe how much glitter I've seen," says Espinet. "Diane von Furstenberg used pale silver and gold on the eyes, and we also saw red lips with glitter all over."

"People are playing with colour and being a bit more experimental," agrees Alexander. "We're moving away from that classic eyeliner and mascara look and having a bit more fun with make-up."

"The word I hear most is the word dream," says Espinet. "People want to be taken away from reality. There has been a move towards making fashion fun. I think we want to be entertained again."

HOW TO BECOME ALL MADE-UP

LYNSEY Alexander was never a dressing up kind of girl, parading around the house in three-sizes-too-big high heels with her face smeared in her mum's make-up. But, as a teenager from Dumfries, who went on to study philosophy at Glasgow University, she walked past a MAC store and was instantly hooked.

"I hadn't even heard of MAC before, and I couldn't believe the girls on the counter were wearing such amazing make-up. So I went in and asked how they came to be working there. The girl said you need to be a make-up artist, and that they worked backstage at the fashion shows, so I thought, right, if that's what I need to do, I'll become a make-up artist.

"It wasn't the make-up that I was inspired by as much as the fashion side of things," she explains. "I knew I didn't want to be a fashion designer or a stylist. I always loved art at school, my mum's an artist, my brother's an architect, and make-up was a way of combining fashion and art."

She took herself off to London to do the shortest course possible – six months – then returned to Scotland to look for work. Eventually MAC took her on in Newcastle, and she commuted from Dumfries for six months, then worked in Edinburgh for six months and finally Glasgow.

When she was 21, a job opportunity came up for a senior artist. "There are only five of us in the UK – it's the role everyone waits for," says Alexander. "You're not on the counter, you're working with models and celebrities for radio and TV."

Getting the job, which made her the youngest member of the pro team in the world, meant she finally had to give up commuting and move to London. That was five years ago.

Now 26, she has worked with celebrities such as Teri Hatcher, Sienna Miller, pictured, and Kelly Osbourne, and on catwalk shows for everyone from Chloe and Balenciaga to Vivienne Westwood and Roberto Cavalli.

This takes her all over the world. "For the next two weeks I'm going to be in London, Milan, Paris; I was in Taiwan earlier in the year and Brazil doing Fashion Rocks; before you catch your breath you're off again."