Backstage Beauty: Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2009 Milan

model: Zuzana Gregorova

The look of beauty behind the D & G collection was a work in contradiction. Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana maintained their signature glamour, presenting opulent clothes complete with loads of fur, voluminous shapes, and plenty of glitz. Seashell decadence was speckled here and there among the creations. Colors were black and white with a hint of color via fucshia, hot pink and and a dash of varying shades of purple, burgundy and a dab of gem tone - quite lovely. Iconic images of Marilyn Monroe added another dimension to the already dramatic sense of Hollywood glamour evident in the collection. Backstage, makeup artist Pat McGrath and hairstylist Eugene Souleiman kept the good times rolling with looks that were equally rich, though observably at each end of the spectrum - strength and softness.

“It’s about modern Hollywood and modern glamour,” said McGrath, who started by applying highlighter to the browbones, inner corners of the eyes, tops of the cheeks, and bridge of the nose. She loaded up the cheeks with “lots of blush” - Dolce & Gabbana powder blush in Rose #3; she accentuated the eyes with shimmery champagne shadow - Dolce & Gabbana’s Stromboli, a ’50s-esque cat-eye stripe of black liner, and false lashes and buckets of black mascara; and she made the lips intense with creamy burgundy color - Dolce & Gabbana’s Ultra lipstick - “to reflect the strong woman of this season.” Those cat-eyes came courtesy of a few of McGrath’s signature tricks: Line the inner rims of your eyes with a white liner so that they appear bigger; and curl lashes before applying mascara for added dimension. As far as reproducing that liquid line — extended toward the temple in perfection with a flick on the end — that’s something true professionalism is made of. A tip: Pointed Q-tips dipped in makeup remover can be key for shaping when a steady hand eludes you.

But while the makeup was all about strength, the hair was “all about softness and lightness,” said Souleiman of the loose knots he created by looping two ponytails together. (One ponytail contained the hair in back; the other, serured an inch above it, was made from the front sections of hair.) “We do it in sections to achieve softness and fluidity,” he explained. “If we just threw it up into a knot, it wouldn’t have the same shape.” As a final touch, each model’s ’do was topped off with a different headpiece created by the designers. The surrealist glamour references were helped along not just by the shapes of the clothes but by some serious backstage handiwork. The hair was accessorized by gloves-as-headpieces that, while bizarre and questionably translatable, were pinned in such a way that they actually seemed to make sense. Somehow, they appeared as a classy assemblage of bows and feathers rather than the haphazard creation of an art-school experimentalist.ranging from luxe (sparkly jeweled accents) to wacky (a bunch of leather gloves plopped onto a headband).

source: elle, allure, wwd, style