For most of us, the couture shows are an aspirational event meant to stoke desire and creativity, rather than any sort of real opportunity to plan next season’s wardrobe. The elevated hair and makeup looks that often accompany these one-of-a-kind pieces, however, are much more attainable. From Versace’s red glitter lips to Dior’s exaggerated feline flicks, these seven standout couture beauty ideas would look just as good with jeans and a killer pair of heels as they did with, say, Fendi’s rose-color Persian lamb dress, which featured 5,000 impeccably hand-cut holes that made it appear as though the entire thing was made of lace. #ifonly.
Photo: Courtesy of Pat McGrath / @patmcgrathreal1/7Versace: Glittering Red Lips
Leave it to Pat McGrath to take a classic makeup staple—a simple, scarlet lip—and transform it into something downright show-stopping. For the Versace show, McGrath deployed as-yet-unreleased pigments from her cult Pat McGrath Labs line and laced them with an unlikely ingredient: glitter. The effect was meant to look “simultaneously young and chic,” says McGrath, who notes that the key to keeping glitter from skewing too young is isolating it in a single, high-impact makeup statement. “That will maintain the balance and beauty of the face,” she adds.
Photo: Courtesy of Sam McKnight / @sammcknight12/7Chanel: High-Fashion Frizz
The spectacular-as-usual set—a series of working Chanel ateliers erected in the Grand Palais—was part of the inspiration for the towering, curly bow-tied coifs that models wore; Karl Lagerfeld’s idea was to create something with enough height and weight to lengthen their necks as they swanned through the structures. Hairstylist Sam McKnight was up to the challenge; he spent four days making 70 different hairpieces for the show. But it was at the fitting that McKnight and Lagerfeld added the pièce de résistance to the attention-grabbings look: a soft halo of frizz. “It became higher and curlier, like a fluffy cloud, sculptured from curls,” McKnight says.
Photographed by Kevin Tachman3/7Dior: Extreme Cat-Eyes
As the beauty look of choice for many of Christian Dior’s original society clients, the feline flick has long been a standby of the haute couture shows. But makeup artist Peter Phillips gave the iconic eye accent a decidedly modern interpretation this week, scrawling it on with exaggerated thickness across upper lash lines; rimming the entire lid with inky black pigment before extending his line toward the temple; reserving it exclusively for lower lash lines; and even rendering it in a shade of gold to pick up the rogue gilded accents in the collectsion’s predominantly black-and-white palette.
Photo: Courtesy of Giles Deacon4/7Giles: Sleek Double Knots
Dior may have introduced the low-slung double ballerina bun to the runway for fall, but Giles Deacon made it haute at his debut couture collectsion. Center-parted and slick—and paired with unblemished and completely unadorned complexions—the raver-esque hairstyle felt grown-up and, dare we say, chic.
Photographed by Kevin Tachman5/7Valentino: Gold Hair Bands
Why have one decorative gold hair tie when you can have 10? That seemed to be the question on hairstylist Guido Palau’s mind when he used the metallic accents to create a symmetrical, segmented frame around models’ faces, which joined a sectioned-off blunt-cut ponytail that grazed the middle of the back. The look was a distinct nod to the hairstyles of the Italian Renaissance, and offered a beautifully gilded send-off for the Dior-bound Maria Grazia Chiuri, who showed her last collectsion for the house as its co-creative director with Pierpaolo Piccioli.
Photo: Courtesy of Sam McKnight / @sammcknight16/7Fendi: Fur Hair Ribbons
Grosgrain and satin bows have always held a special place in fairy tales, thanks to storybook style icons like Alice, Belle, and Little Red Riding Hood. But Fendi’s full-on fashion fantasy at Rome’s Trevi Fountain, where Sam McKnight spun models’ hair into fuzzy, center-parted ringlets, introduced us to a magical new method for securing a center-parted half-up-half-down look: fur ribbon. Each long, individual piece of pelt custom cut for the house’s 90th anniversary served to further elevate an already next-level moment.
Photo: Indigital.tv7/7Giambattista Valli: Supernatural Skin
When it comes to creating a makeup look to properly complement ornate embroideries, endless frills, and high Victorian collars, less is often more. Or at least it was at Giambattista Valli, where makeup artist Val Garland decided that Valli's party frocks were so spectacular, they needed little else beyond even complexions and statement brows—bleached arches alternated with a brushed-up, elongated dark version for a subtle hint of contrast.
