Lacquered Lover: Lacquered Lover Backstage at Carmen Marc Valvo with NARS and Ted Gibson!

I'm so sorry for the delay but I'm finally catching up on my NYFW posts! I was lucky enough to be invited backstage to see the hair and makeup look with Teb Gibson and NARS for the Carmen Marc Valvo show this past Fashion Week. The look they were going for was "baroque punk" to match with the black and textures of the collection.

Above: The makeup look created by NARS

According to the interview I had with James Boehmer, NARS Director of Global Artistry:

"The whole look is about a baroque influence. So Carmen started thinking about Oscar Wilde and it went into this sort of punk idea. So for the girls we wanted them to have a lot of strength so we are doing a messy but pretty punk eye. So it's sort of a little bit of contour and highlight on the eye and then we are taking a new product for NARS that's coming out for Fall which is our eye paint and we're literally sketching a messy black eyeliner in the outer corner, lots of mascara and then to make it feel more ethereal we're using the multiple stick in Luxor to really highlight the cheekbones. So this gives a very fresh ethereal feeling to contrast with the dirty punk eye. And then the lip is really about balancing the color on the eye, it's not too dark and not too bright so we're using Salsa lip liner to shape the mouth and then powdering it and then we're using Luxemborg satin lip pencil which is a new color we are launching for Spring. It's a Cassis, vinyl color and then the very last thing we are doing in the lineup is taking Triple X which is a clear lipgloss on the eyelid which gives it this really otherworldly finish. Especially with the lights on the runway, it will illuminate the eye and the lip has a little bit of sheen so the lip will be illuminate as well. It makes it not quite so hard, a little bit of prettier punk. It's a very black collection with a lot of texture so we wanted to play with the texture in the makeup."

For the hair, lead designer Devin Toth for Ted Gibson told me that "Essentially the look for today is baroque punk and it was inspired by the collection. Carmen and I decided that the collection is very black and embellished and it's very dark but not gaudy. So what we decided to do was first flat iron the hair, we didn't use product or blow dry the hair and then to tame it we used shine lotion and fix it gel used our fingers to bring all the hair up in a high pony tail. Once we bring it up, lots of fix it, lots of tame it, we secure the pony tail with a tight bungee. Once it's up there we dry it off because it's kind of wet when we get it up there and top it off with a lot of hair spray. And then to add to the punk look we use hair chalk to add some gradient color to the bottom of the tail. Then we seal that with a little bit of hairspray so the chalk doesn't fade. What we're going to do is let this cool off and then we'll take the elastic out and shake out the hair to give a messy look and rough up the top. Then we will have this great indentation in the hair right below the ear. Carmen felt that was really beautiful. It's for the girl that just wakes up, maybe has some color gradient at the bottom, puts in a pony tail and some gel and before she gets to work, takes out the pony tail to have a tousled look around the face."

The overall look was stunning. Here are a few pictures from NARS PR of the full look: