It was a mob scene backstage at Burberry when Cara Delevingne was in the makeup chair.

We snagged two (just two!) minutes in the makeup chair with Cara Delevingne—Burberry It girl, London Fashion Week’s hottest model, and model of the year at the 2012 British Fashion Awards.

Delevingne’s top beauty advice for aspiring models:

1. Practise makes perfect. “Get the biggest heels possible and make sure you practise walking in them. A lot. I had to learn that the hard way by being laughed at [laughs].”

2. Take care of your feet. “Buy a foot bath spa thing. That’s always good. And Epsom salts to bathe in at nighttime.”

3. Keep it simple when it comes to skin care. Her go-to item: “Simple face wipes.” On facials?: “I haven’t had time.”

4. Most importantly, always ask for extra mascara. As Burberry Beauty artistic consultant Wendy Rowe finished up Delevingne’s makeup (a subtle, nod to the ’60s with a golden glow—more to come on that in the next post), Delevingne pouted sweetly and pleaded for extra mascara on her bottom lashes. “See, I can’t give special treatment,” Rowe replied with a coy smile before applying a few extra coats to Delevingne’s top lashes. “Oh, that little bit of mascara is all the extra!” Delevingne cooed as she ran off to hair.

Click through to read the full post & see more pics of Cara Delevingne from London Fashion Week…

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Greg Wencel, CoverGirl makeup pro, works his magic on a model backstage at Jeremy Laing.

Jeremy Laing first showed his Spring 2013 collection at New York Fashion Week in September, so for his encore presentation at The shOws last night, makeup artist Greg Wencel and hair artist Justin German were charged with taking the original beauty look and giving it a special Toronto twist.

Let’s listen in on how they did it:

MAKEUP LOOK: Greg Wencel, CoverGirl makeup pro

Designer inspiration ”Jeremy wanted it to look quite lived in and handsome. He didn’t want them to look too princessy, or too done or too glam.”

Creating the look “We left the brows and the lashes bare. We combed clear mascara through both to get rid of any unruly hairs and to give them a little bit of definition. On the eye, we used Iced Cappuccino blush underneath the eye and the brow bone. Then we put a clear gloss on the eye—we just pressed that onto the eye with our fingertips. We used the same blush on the cheekbones. We wanted it to be tone on tone—soft focus. We wanted to give the cheeks definition without competing with the eye. Using the same colour softly draws your eye to the eyes.”

Fresh touch ”I think it has a little bit of a ’70s feel, but what makes it modern is the lack of lashes and the lack of a defined brow. Also, the blush—it reminds me of the ’70s too, that high sculpted cheekbone, but because it’s not as angular and it’s not as harsh, it looks more modern.”

HAIR LOOK: Justin German, Pantene consulting stylist

Designer inspiration ”The thing about Jeremy—his stuff is simple but it’s modern. It’s not fussy. [The clothes] go with this look, because it’s linear but it still has a modern edge.”

Creating the look “On either side, we’re doing a two-strand twist instead of a corn row—when you twist it, it looks like a rope, like a coil. Then we gather them at the bottom with a simple ponytail down the back. For product, we’re using a Sebastian Moldable Shine Wax, because it’s a little bit greasy—almost like a pomade, old school. At the last minute, we’ll use a matte putty, so [it will look] more edgy but not greasy. I like the look of the shiny and the dry together.”

Pony up ”[The look is]  a twist on the ponytail. The ponytail is it in the centre of the head one year, then it’s low, a deep side part, a high ponytail. The low pony is classic. Braids have been around for so long, so it’s  a nice twist to make them… twist.”

German’s all-time favourite pony look? “I always love me a good old-fashioned high ponytail. Kind of Madonna-ish. Tight, tight head and really hot.”

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Image courtesy of IMAXtree.com.

It’s never good when the white noise of backstage (a veritable hum of hairdryers, chit chat and cell phone ring tones) suddenly goes silent.

At Phillip Lim 3.1 Spring/Summer 2013, Brit hairdresser Paul Hanlon (dubbed the Ryan Gosling of hairdressing due to his affable demeanor and good looks) was hard at work his creating the intensely teased, bedhead ‘do. Even before the power went off, it was a pressurized environment. The call all makeup and hair teams hate to hear, “5 minutes to rehearsal!” had just rung out down across the messy, crowded aisle of workstations. And then, suddenly silence. Don’t you love how I’m dragging this out like I was witnessing open heart surgery during a electricity failure?

Though I had been hovering nearby watching Hanlon work under a dense, rising cloud of hairspray, when the lights went out I beat a hasty retreat. Let’s put it this way: Watching such a hugely talented artist interrupted from his work when under tremendous stress, watching him rush around frantically trying to restore the electricity, a glaze of panic-sweat beading on his forehead and the occasional swear word being barked loudly towards the ceiling was too much. I liken it to seeing your dad cry for the first time.

I hit the catering area and stocked up on Madelines.

Read more of Vanessa’s NYFW dispatch….

The beauty look at 3.1 Phillip Lim.

All spectacle aside (the power eventually did go back on, and disaster was averted), the beauty look for Phillip Lim 3.1 was one of my favourites of the week.

Francelle Daly, who used NARS makeup to create the lash-heavy look, summed it up as “a very modern rocker chick, with elements of early Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Lita Ford, Joan Jett. A tiny bit of sunkissed bronzer, a matte bronzer– as if she’s been at a music festival all day. It’s a fun effortlessly ‘rocker’ look.”

Image via IMAXtree

It’s been an interesting week so far in New York. We’ve had bloody nails, Edie Sedgwick inspired beauty workstations and even guinea pigs on street corners.

(Really. Guinea pigs. I don’t even question anything I see in this city anymore.)

When it comes to makeup, the Spring/Summer shows tend to be when bold pops of colour show up everywhere, from lips to cheeks to eyes.

Yet, we’re seeing a serious wave of bare faces (Narcisco Rodriguez), nude lips and nails, and even skin is stepping up in a starring role. I think this return to simplicity is a fantastic trend –it seems very fresh and ahead of the curve to scale things back sometimes. But, that doesn’t mean we should go without colour. Nuh-uh.

Thank goodness for the inimitable Donna Karan sent her girls down the runway at Donna Karan New York with a seriously bright beauty message.

MAC artist Charlotte Tilbury described it like this. “We wanted to do something that would be a strong juxtaposition to the collection,” she said, referencing the colour palette of dreamy creams, blues and greys in Karan’s clothes. “We’re using this magenta eye, which is created with a really bright pink/purple lip liner, and we’re drawing it in a straight line across the eye. It’s a modern shape, quite wide in the center, quite square. Then and then underneath there’s a blank space in the inner corner of the eye.”

Tilbury and her team also used a bright pink pencil as “a mascara, painting the lashes bottom and top. Of the overall message, Tilbury was philosophical. “I feel like bright colour done in modernist ways is very interesting right now,” she said. “It’s a strong look and it encapsulates the season.”

Key product: MAC Lip Pencil in Magenta

Award season may be a wrap over in Hollywood, but we like to bring out the big guns (and the fancy dresses) in the spring. That’s when ELLE Canada and ELLE Quebec reveal their top beauty products in our annual Beauty Grand Prix awards, featured in our May 2012 issue.

For the record, this is no rinky dink survey. We hand the editorial reigns to nearly 975 of our readers, and ask them to review and test out 212 unmarked products from skin care to makeup to haircare. Once they’ve smushed, blended and spritzed in a month-long product party, we have them tell us which ones were the real standouts. 40 winners emerge from the bunch to appear in the magazine. Read the rest of this entry

The moment when you realize that your beauty crutch has become crippling.

I have a beauty confession: I am an over-blusher.  There, I said it. For some girls, their must-have beauty item is mascara, for others its lip gloss. But blush is to me what eyeliner is to the Duchess of Cambridge: a trusted go-to that I usually take too far.

It never occurred to me I was overusing my hero product. Then (in a fairly unflattering photograph), my resemblance to someone from Ringling Brothers was undeniable; I need to rethink my blushing techniques.

Why would someone with my access to expert tips OD on rouge? Simple, I’m not a morning person, and getting Miu Miu’s limited-edition spring 2012 handbags. Slim, to none.

Every morning (in my pre-caffeine haze), my trusted “wakeup product” is always my blush compact. Mascara is usually credited for giving you a bright-eyed pop, but a flush gives you that rested look more than full lashes. “Blush warms up and livens your overall complexion,” says celebrity makeup artist Amy Duclos. “Finding the right shade and texture can be tricky, it’s easy to overdo it.”

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It’s something you often hear photographers say: “She’s got good bones.” They’re referring to models, of course, not the remnants of their chicken dinner. At a recent shoot in New York (watch for it in our May issue!), I spoke with photographer John van der Schilden about how important facial structure is when doing beauty shoots. “It’s about the bones,” he says. “That’s what makes someone more than just a pretty model—the anatomy of her face. It separates the really incredible girls from the rest.”

The importance of facial structure is something that designer Tom Ford is also very aware of. (How’s that for a seamless segue?) As we all know, Mr. Ford is a designer obsessed with every detail of everything he works on, and nowhere is this more evident than in Tom Ford Beauty, a 132-piece collection of skin care, makeup and nail polishes. In London, where he presented his fall/winter 2012/13 line, he spoke about his direction for beauty and his desire to have it really work with the shape of the face.

“One of the things that was important to me when we launched makeup is the architecture of the face—like making cheekbones appear in the right proportion,” he says. “So we did something we called ‘Shade and Illuminate,‘ which is a lighter version of comical makeup that almost no one uses.” Ford says the faces were done to look like they had minimal makeup on, with a little gloss on the eyes and a strong brow.

Small, depressing caveat: In Canada, we can only get Tom Ford‘s fragrances and lipsticks; the full line of products are only available in the United States, Europe, Australia and Russia. If you’re not travelling to any of those places in the near future, you can buy it online at Neiman Marcus and have it shipped to you. Sure, you may have to re-mortgage your house in order to make a few purchases (the foundation is US$78), but your newly highlighted bones are surely worth an extra 30 years of loan payments.

Image courtesy of ImaxTree.com

1. Wear more red lipstick

“Generally, blondes should look for a warmer red and brunettes a red with a cooler blue undertone. But it’s really about differentiating between personal preference and style. Orange is a little trendier, while blue-red is more classic.” – New York-based makeup artist Min Min Ma. Vanessa Craft

Image courtesy of Tina Zellmer

2. Wear a sock bun

There are two critical periods in any woman’s life: before the sock bun (oft signified by a sad, limp little twist of hair) and after (basking in the glory of a bountiful bun). It’s a game changer. Try it as a trendy, high topknot or at your nape for a ballerina-inspired ‘do. Kathryn Hudson

Step 1: First, cut the toe off your favourite sport sock.

Step 2: Make a ponytail and slip it through the sock hole, sliding the sock to the tip.

Step 3: Tuck the ends under and roll inward until you reach the top of your head.

Step 4: Secure your bun with a few bobby pins.

Photo courtesy of Norbert Mayer

3. Choose a signature scent

We all want to find that certain head-turning fragrance, but Nahla Saad, co-owner of Toronto niche-fragrance boutique Noor, knows that creating a scent signature isn’t about sticking to one perfume – rather, it’s about having a wardrobe of perfumes in the same fragrance family. “Think of fragrance as a colour wheel,” she explains. “If you love florals, that’s your red, but you can wear a floral with an oriental and create a pink. It’s still recognizable, but it adds some personality and depth.” Ally Dean

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At David Dixon, hair and makeup was both very pretty, and very wearable.

Hair and makeup at David Dixon. Image by Noah Lehava

For makeup, skin was matte with some highlight at the cheekbones using eyeshadow in Morning Light (a favourite of Eddie Malter, Official Makeup Artist with L’Oreal). Eyebrows were made bolder with Wear Infinite eyeshadow in 821, while the lids were gilded with a touch of HIP eyeshadow in 538. A bit of eyeliner on the lower lash line and a quick sweep of mascara finished the eye look. Cheeks were played up with a pink blush in Sweet Blush in 820 while lips were given a matte pinkish look using L’Oreal Single eyeshadow in Golden Sunset 820.

For hair, the look was created by Dixon’s creative team using just a bit of styling wax and hairspray. The hair was first side parted with it coming over the forehead just slightly, and then swept into a low side ponytail, with it kept a bit loose, almost gaping a bit. The resulting style is put together, clean and simple.

Which look from LG Fashion Week was your favourite?

Fresh and clean is what you can expect from the hair and makeup at Joe Fresh and the look last night was no exception – which we love as it’s totally wearable.

Fresh and easy hair at Joe Fresh. Image by Noah Lehava

Eric Del Monaco, L’Oreal Paris Official Hair Stylist and Colourist, was asked by the designer to use no product to keep the look fresh and sporty, so hair was simply brushed back into a natural ponytail (not too high or low) with the front given a short side part. If doing the look at home, he suggests giving your hair a fresh blow dry first to smooth out the cuticle. Read the rest of this entry