Sharp Looks

In contrast to the soft, natural, sporty, Ralph Lauren country style inspired makeup and fashion trends that are now in vogue, there exists another opposing trend which is currently thriving and evolving. This trend is a sharp look that is enhanced through strong, bold, often dark, and always defined, streamlines reminiscent of  the 40s and 50s. In clothing this fashion includes elongated or turned up shoulder silhouettes (albeit, the turned up shoulders are a short lived fad while the structured shoulders are here to stay for some time); cinched in high waists; fitted hips, girth and upper buttock area; weighty, skyscraper heels or wedged platforms (yet in-set); pointy toes; and stovepipes and pegged in slacks, skirts and jeans. It's a fashion that accentuates curves, and then contrasts them against acute angles and defined lines.  The end result is a matronly, stylised, adult like, dressy, power hungry look. A highly disciplined femininity with a slight domineering twist.

The contrast and cohesion of this power-play vs femininity 50s inspired fashion has also spilled over into the world of makeup. Within these peripherals, the makeup style is strong and defined and also includes strong streamlines.  One of these fashions includes the change that has occurred to nails - round or oval nails, and more recently, to pointy shapes.  The dark, long, lean elegance of the  Betty Davis styled nails have replaced the square and squaval tacky white french manicured sporty length talons alla 00s porn star. Again, it's a more feminine style, yet edgier and with slight masochistic, darker tone.

When dealing with eye makeup, this fashion has abandoned the panda/smoky eye makeup and primarily adopted in its place stylised liquid liner applied with a heavy hand répertoire  shaped into wings (think Amy Winehouse) or tail tips (think a stereotypical 50s star eyeline job).  At the moment there is a tendency of leaning towards wings over tails, albeit the runways have been oscillating  between the two styles for the past five years without  making any clear cut statement.

However, one makeup trend often present with highly stylised liner is a nude, clean face, where the only exaggeration to exist is the eyeliner itself.  This is sharp, bold, and dare I say, harsh look.  The skin is kept flawless, the lips and brows subtly camouflaged and any eye makeup  is kept nude and mostly matte. From such a base the eyeliner can be of any colour, intensity, shape, angle and length. As lovely as the catwalk Armani model on the left may look, this is not a look that adapts well to reality.  The stark contrast between the illusion of no makeup and a single exaggerated stylised feature can be aging and grim causing feature imbalance, rendering the look only suitable as a fashion statement.

Another alternative is to blend the liner by using shadow  applied in an elongated winged style, connecting to the lower  eyelid liner. A good example of this type of technique can be seen on the left on Angelina Jolie. The liner may be applied with a liquid or cream/gel eyeliner  and is then blended with a matching shadow to soften its effect with finely controlled blending.Having a liner on the bottom eyeline also helps soften the effect of the liner.

For those seeking such a trend but in a  slightly  more flattering  context, another alternative is also a  50s inspired stylised eyelid shadow adaptation which is just starting to make a splash on the fashion scene. With this style makeup there a few manners in which the eyeshadow is applied, but  the common denominator is always the eyeshadow applied in a manner that emulates eyeliner. In the picture to the right, the stylisation has occur on a classic V shadow back corner application, where the shadow applied is the same colour to the eyeliner which enhances the ambiguity of  the corner crease, the  outer corners and the eyeliner melding into each other into a sharp corner.  By not defining  areas of the eye with different shades and tones, and by  choosing not to blend the shadow, electing to concentrate on lines instead renders the the eye makeup easier in creating two dimensional manipulations, especially of the stylised manner. 

Westwood's autumn/winter 2011 runway also opted for a quasi-cat eye style of make up by combining a lower eyelid smoke effect with matching burgandy winged liner.  A truly sexy bedroom eye combination. The makeup artist also balanced off the strong eye amkeup to matching matte lipstick, thus a lot of the harshness of eye only makeup is eliminated.

With exaggerated liner trend growing in strength it is inevitable that the next logical fashion step would be cat eye eyeshadow application makeup. In this typeof makeup, the eyeliner gives way to the lower eyelid eyeshadow applied in a stylised and streamlined manner. The model to the left is wearing a soft variation of the 80s cat eye makeup.  In the 80s this was a very popular makeup option. The cat eye makeup was influenced by the 50s, gothics and punk fashion.  At the timeit was also referred to as "vampire makeup, which now is referred to as vamp.

The cat eye 50s and 80s makeup has also influenced  glasses fashion. The photo below is from the Prada runway autumn winter 2011 collection, where similar cuts were also shown on Dolce e Gabbana, Chanel and various other runways.  This is one of the few trends where fashion follows makeup, rather than the other way round. Here Prada has further emphasised the makeup influence by accentuating the cat eye shape with a black line on the upper frame emulating a winged liner and a soft neutral beige colour on the rest of the frame emulating that nude eye makeup look that is often coupled with stylised liner. Love it!  Wonderful  to see that even Prada  is capable of a little little tongue in cheek fashion humour.