The Beauty of Fashion Week NYC 2010

By Melissa Barlow on February 25th, 2010

My Fashion Week 2010 beauty post is a little late due to the fact that I suffered total and complete computer failure, but since I am focusing on the makeup and beauty of Fashion Week I think it will still work. Mercedes Benz Fashion Week is one of the biggest fashion events of the year and an early look at the years upcoming trends, including makeup trends. It seems that after the flood of dark make up colors that were popular this winter, designers are heading in a much more neutral direction in terms of make up. There were a lot of pale/bare lips and smokey eyes with browns, taupes, golds and blush-less, sharply defined cheeks. To me, it’s all very ’90s looking, and since I grew up in the ’90s, I’m a little bored with this year’s looks. But these are a few highlights:

Anna Sui, one of my favorite designers, went for an almost pale goth look with her models sporting alabaster skin, sharp cheekbones, brown smokey almost sunken eyes and (groan) brown lipsticks with darker brown lip liner. Really? Are we going down the path of Sharpie lip-liner again? It was awful in the ’90s and it’s still awful now. (I should know, I have many a picture of myself with red lipstick and black lip liner. What was I thinking?)

Christian Siraino must have used Frida Kahlo as his muse this season as his models all sported big, bushy overdrawn eyebrows, brick red lips and even (gasp!) a hint of mustache. While I know that the actual look of his models is extreme, I feel that he is heading in the right direction by celebrating full natural brows and my favorite part of being a girl: Red, red lipstick.

By far the most use of color in a make up was not from one major designer, but from The Heart Truth’s Red Dress Collection. This line promoting heart disease awareness is modeled by celebs not supermodels and Joan Collins rocked the runway with her classic big hair and Dynasty make up. Felicity Huffman looks stunning and fresh faced too, and I even appreciated Kim Kardashian’s turn on the runway because at least she wasn’t wearing brown lipstick like every other model in New York.

All in all, I have to say that I am kind of disappointed in the make up looks this year. In my opinion, nobody took any risks, with Siraino’s look being the most creative. With vampires, zombies and all things supernatural as popular as they are, designers are trying to emulate that, but I have a feeling that the emaciated pale/brown look with un-rouged cheekbones that could cut glass only works on Robert Pattinson and supermodels. That’s kind of what this years fashion week looked like to me, a VERY well-dressed zombie fashion show.