This Time-Saving Makeup Tip Lets the Balmain Army Take on the World
“Olivier always says to me ‘just make each girl look like her very best self,’ “ Val Garland explained this morning. The backstage makeup artist was speaking of Rousteing, the Balmain designer whose runways have long been defined by his self-confident army of models. “We do whatever it takes to make each girl feel and look beautiful.”
That pointed syntax—of feeling first—registered as an individual celebration of each girl. “It’s finished skin, it’s a brushed up brow, groomed and filled in,” Garland said. Some of the girls received what she called “invisible eyeliner,” or a few ticks of black pigment between the lashes for a slight emphasis, which went well with the sleek “punk princess” ponytails crafted by Sam McKnight. Her best trick, however, lay in the tube of L’Oréal Color Riche lipstick—Number 352 Beauty Guru, to be exact, to give a stain to the lip and a slight flush to the cheeks. “That looks red, but when you apply it to the skin,” she said, dashing it across the back of her hand and pressing it in to demonstrate, “it looks a little bit pink, a little bit apricot at the same time.”
“Literally with your thumb, it just melts into the skin,” she went on, “and then you only need one product in your bag!” Which leaves plenty of time for the Balmain Army to take on the world.
