"The inspiration is how celebrities used to live in hotel suites," begins Moroccanoil artistic director Kevin Hughes backstage at the Georgine NYFW Fall/Winter 2017 show. He continues, "We thought: What would the Georgine girl's suite look like if we were peering through the keyhole?" The answer (at least, for the girl lounging in the suite): Inky black wigs cut, curled and messed to sexy imperfection. Hughes notes that, because he's working with synthetic wigs, each had to be steamed to remove any tight kinks, and then he went back in and reintroduced curl by wrapping each section in opposite directions and keeping the ends free. To tamp down the plastic sheen of synthetic wigs, he offers this tip: Use a dry shampoo. "We used Moroccanoil Dry Texture Spray to matte down the top. It makes the hair look and feel more real," he says.
Also very real: the nails, which nail lead Pattie Yankee fashions with her eponymous nail polish in Void to appear like chipped, worn lacquer. "We want the girl to look carefree—like a manicure is the last thing on her mind," she explains.
The makeup is more fraught over; the dimension of the eye shadow alone takes a true artist to achieve. MAC makeup lead Romero Jennings layers MAC Purple Paint Stick over Designer Purple in the crease, followed by Red Paint Stick blended into the corner, all toped with Dazzle Shadow in I Like To Watch to achieve the prismatic lid, but then tops his creation with gloss. "The colors all melt together with the gloss on top, which I think is a fun way to do a smoky eye," he says. "These girls are bold and impactful. They're from downtown, so they're glamorous but with a bit of grunge. I call it, ‘a Goth girl in Park Avenue Clothes," he says. —Karie L. Frost
[PHOTO CREDITS: Courtesy Moroccanoil, Karie L. Frost]
