Nanette Lepore Fall 2010 Fashion Week Backstage Beauty

The two-toned lip is not something you’d expect to see in every day life. Unless you’re color blind, a MAC Cosmetics artist, or a member of Cirque du Soleil.

Nanette Lepore Fall 2010 Backstage Beauty

But this was precisely the beauty trompe l’oeil at Lepore’s Fall 2010 collection.

When she powwowed with her the hair and makeup stylists for her Fall 2010 show, Nanette Lepore brought a visual aide: a Renaissance painting. Makky for MAC and Esther Langham for Moroccan Oil let it guide their creative decisions for the show. After creating the now-standard perfect matte canvas of the face, Makky gave models a smoky eye with Eye Kohl in Smolder on the top lid as well as the inside rims and finished off with Zoom Mascara.

He painted on a two-tone lip with pink lip pencil and an as yet unreleased pink lipstick on the the top lip and smoothed on burgundy lip pencil and a mixture of Odyssey and Charred Red lipstick on the bottom. This technique works, Makky explained, because the pink on the top lip contains a hint of burgundy itself.

Nanette Lepore Fall 2010 Backstage Beauty

Langham mixed together the Moroccan Oil Oil Treatment and Intense Curl Cream and applied it to the models’ hair before using curling irons to create tight ringlets from a side part. After spraying on a layer of Luminous Hair Spray, coming this March to the Moroccan Oil line, Langham brushed the hair out so it fell in loose, romantic waves. For some models, Langham stopped here, but for others, she finger-combed hair back into a loose braid, then rolled the braid up and pinned it at the nape of the neck. After a final shot of the Glimmer Shine Spray, the models were cat-walk ready.

Katharine McKenzie