At fashion week, hair and makeup direction has been known to change just hours before a show begins. Such was the case at Alice + Olivia this season, where a lip stain was added to an otherwise pared-down beauty look the morning of the presentation. “Stacey [Bendet, the designer] came in and said, ‘I think we need something on the lip,’” Maybelline global makeup artist Erin Parsons told us backstage of the last-minute addition to the makeup. The pair worked on finding the colour together (“She really knows what she wants when she sees it,” says Parsons), landing on a berry hue created by mixing Color Sensational lipstick in 410 Blissful Berry with 645 Red Revival to increase the richness of the shade.

To create the stain, Parsons first generously applied the lipstick to the back of her hand (which is worth noting has a tube of red lipstick tattooed on it), then used her fingers to tap each shade into the lips before blotting with a tissue. “To do a stain like this, you tap one shade on, blot, blot, blot, tap another one on and blot until it really becomes part of the lip and people wouldn’t look at it and think it’s not your real lip colour,” she explains.