The Exact Drugstore Lipstick Used For H&M's Spring 2017 Runway Show in Paris
By Sophia Panych. Photos: Getty Images.
Paris fashion week is about as fancy as you think it is. Show are held at places like the Louvre and the Rodin Museum. Models saunter about in outfits that cost the same as a mortgage. On a house. And the hair and makeup products used backstage are normally pretty pricey. But today, at the H&M spring 2017 show in Paris, makeup artist Mark Carrasquillo (who I once nervously helped assist during London fashion week) broke out a lipstick that costs a mere five bucks and can be found at most drugstores around the U.S.
While wandering down a street full of beauty supply stores in Paris, Carrasquillo came upon a shop full of cheapie makeup, but cheapie makeup that was really, really good. "My daughter and her friend were with me and we went crazy, we lost our minds — I think I spent about 500 euros in there," he said. But what he was most impressed with were the lipsticks he found, two of which he mixed together to create the beautiful fuchsia-purple hue he painted on models' lips for the show: "You can't believe the texture and the pigment, it's insane! Someone is making some seriously good cosmetics at a very good price." Thing was, the tubes didn't have any brand scrawled across them, only a tiny label on the back that you need to have 20/20 vision and great lighting — or better yet, a magnifying glass — to read. Luckily, between the three beauty editors backstage, we figured it out. The lipsticks in question were L.A. Girls Matte Flat Velvet Lipsticks in Manic and Love Triangle{: rel=nofollow}, which, in the United States, can be found at Rite Aid and CVS. "I'm going back tomorrow to replace the ones I used up tonight," laughed Carrasquillo.
To create the color for the H&M spring 2017 show, Carrasquillo chopped up the two lipsticks and mixed them together in little plastic pots, then painted them onto the models' lips with a stiff lip brush. "It's crazy because this color works on every model in the show, regardless of her skin tone; we haven't found one girl who doesn't look good in it," he explained. "It's so rich and pigmented that it just works." To make the color stand out even more, Carrasquillo finished the lip with a dusting of a now discontinued shade of Nars Powder Blush called Coeur Battant, a cool-toned fuchsia powder, which gave the mouth an intensely matte finish.
So it turns out professional makeup artists are just like us. They appreciate a good deal when they find one — even if they find it while wandering the streets of Paris during fashion week, being fancy AF.
This story originally appeared on Allure.
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