Last week, make-up maverick Pat McGrath painted blue all over the eyelids of models backstage at Anna Sui. The colour was immediately declared the comeback kid of make-up, and beauty fans with their beady eyes trained on NYFW rubbed their hands together in glee at the idea that McGrath’s next collection may be a riot of blue hues.
Blue’s place this season has now been consolidated thanks to a starring role at Gareth Pugh’s LFW show last night, only this time things got a little more bold and it made it onto lips. Yep, you read that correctly: blue lips. With blackened-green smudged all around eyes. As you do.
The woman behind this look is the one and only Val Garland for MAC. Val’s vision was to create a look that suggested resistance and strength to match Pugh’s graphic, dark clothes.
Now we’re not suggesting you sport blue lipstick in the boardroom, but as we wrote a list of rules for blue eye make-up, we felt it only fair to furnish you with some for blue lips should you be feeing experimental. So…
Skin needs to be glossy
Couple a blue lip with matte skin and you’ll look pretty sickly. To avoid being mistaken for a corpse, breathe life into skin with hydrating serums and plenty of skin prep.
You can’t leave eyes nude
We’re not suggesting you go full Pugh and paint black eggs around your eyes, but if you’re going to do the lip, there needs to be balance. Plentiful mascara will do the job, though mascara + a flick of liner on your upper lash line is the sweet spot.
Get your lipline perfect
A wonky lip line on such an eye-catching lipstick is a disaster. The easiest way to ensure it doesn’t happen to you is to buy a clear lip pencil (Laura Mercier and Max Factor make good ones) and run it around your painted lips to smooth and even out the edges.
Continued below…
Will you be bold enough to give it a whirl?