Report by Antonia Whyatt.

Photography courtesy of Max Factor

“Women say they want their skin to look ‘natural’,” says make-up artist Pat McGrath, sipping a post-show cocktail at the Hospital club in Covent Garden, “but what they really mean is they want to look HDTV natural.” She’s got a point. Our idea of natural has been tied to film ever since Max Factor created the first ‘Pan-Cake’ make-up for Hollywood. Now close to 100 years on, we expect naked perfection, as played out at the London shows.
Backstage at Issa [see left], the models were glowing in a hyper-real way — the foundation on their skin was so fine, if they’d sworn they had nothing on you would have believed them. This was thanks to Pat McGrath’s secret weapon, Max Factor’s brand- new Second Skin Foundation.

Skin was the tonal trend of the season. From beige and taupe eyes to ‘concealer’ used as the lip colour du jour, it was everyone’s inspiration. For Christopher Kane’s show, Lucia Pieroni gave skin a preternatural glow, prepping it with Clé de Peau, before highlighting cheekbones with cult product Egyptian Magic. At Matthew Williamson, James Kaliardos, the master of minimalism, had reduced his products to the L’Oréal Paris Made for Me Naturals Doutzen palette, and used it to do all his tonal contouring. “Women are used to airbrushed images and seeing perfection; they expect products to deliver.” Meanwhile, at Jaeger, girls had been given what we are calling ‘mushroom face’, a harmony of beiges and taupes created by M.A.C make-up artist Hannah Murray. She proudly brandished her four key products (Oak lip pencil, Luna Cream Colour base, Beguile Eyebrow Gel and M.A.C Face & Body), saying, “Anyone can do this look, it makes the girls super-gorgeous in this Lauren Hutton way.”

For Erdem, M.A.C make-up artist Andrew Gallimore was going for a ‘hyper-real’ look. He slicked cheekbones and eyelids with gloss for polish, and painted eyelashes with a fan brush to make them black and pointy in a nod to Erdem’s geisha influence.

The happy ending is that Max Factor has once more moved with the times and created a foundation to make real skin look, well, real, but in a filmic way by using high resolution pigments that mimic the ‘multi-chromatic look’ of flawless skin. How perfect.

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