Makeup Trends at the Southwest Fashion Festival

Over the course of the two days I attended the Southwest Fashion Festival, I witnessed thirty-five models getting made up by nine makeup artists for twelve different shows.

Needless to say, it was mass organisation and makeup artistry under pressure.

Volunteers from Shiseido, and The Beauty Shop Bunbury were conducting the makeups in stations, as they worked tirelessly to get all models done in time for the opening show.

From the front row however, once the music started and the models began to take the catwalk, there was not a hint of chaos.

What we saw instead were beautiful fresh-faced models - and many of these with statement lips.

This season it’s time to invest in lipsticks and liners, and work on those pretty pouts.

The lip trend is perfect for winter, where our wardrobes can tend to be dominated by blacks and greys, you can liven your look up with a statement colour.

For the wearable art shows on day one, the models wore clean eyes, with extended black liquid eyeliner, and black lips. Too drastic? Not at all!

The trick with a heavy lip like this is to keep the rest of the face clean and defined. Rather than adding colour on the lids, and cheeks, try instead to define the shape of the eye with a liner, and the cheeks with a bronzer.

The tip to getting your lip the perfect shade of black?

The makeup artists backstage used a clear lip balm first, and then applied a black eye shadow using a small brush, effectively creating their own lipstick. This tip can apply to any colour – free reign for your choice of the perfect pout.

For the designer showcases, the models were made up with a light smoky eye using browns, and pink lips. If you are still new to the heavy lip, try a look like this to get you used to really making that pout pop. Add subtle colours to your lids (try smoky browns as Shiseido did here, rather than charcoal palettes), and use a natural coloured lip liner, with a pink lipstick to finish.

Come day two, and luscious lips were still on the makeup artists' minds.

For these shows the models donned deep red lips again with a soft smoky brown eye.

To really make the red stand out on the catwalk, the makeup artists used a blue-red instead of an orange-red.

DID YOU KNOW? When looking for a red lipstick, they will all be categorised by these two base colours. The blue-reds are deeper, stronger colours like red wine. The orange-reds tend to be more of a sunset colour.

The way the makeup artists backstage ensured the lipstick wore well for these shows, was to not only line the lip with red lip liner, but to colour the whole lip in, essentially priming it for the application of lipstick. Not only does this make the lip wear longer, it also makes the colour stronger.

The volunteers behind the makeup looks pictured all pitched in to try and assist the southwest designers to be showcased in a professional way. It was rather fitting for Shiseido to be a major sponsor for this event, as they uphold the very notion that event coordinator Jo Clark was trying to achieve by hosting this event. That is, such talent should not have to spend the first half of their career as struggling artists.

The Shiseido Gallery was opened in 1919, and now exists in the Tokyo Ginza Shiseido building as the oldest gallery in Japan. President of the company at the time, Shinzo Fukuhara used to offer young avant-garde artists to display their work in the gallery free of charge. He would personally interview each artist, and select the ones he thought were best fit to display their work. This would give them a hefty leg up in the industry and boost their careers. The gallery has shown the works of over 5000 artists, and is still investing in young art today.

The Southwest Fashion Festival provided a platform for Shiseido in WA to continue the age-old tradition and help up and coming artists (in the form of fashion designers) boost their careers.

Read more about the South-West Fashion Festival here.

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