Make-up & beauty

Backstage at Derek Lam hair is being teased into a deliberate chaos of messy strands, turned into a bouffant shape and then knotted at the base of the neck into what feels like a lived-in style. The fringe is pinned to the side with a girlishness that belies the roughness of the rest. Derek Lam’s fall 2012 girl is youthful and sweet, but a little …

The key pieces from Rag & Bone’s F/W 2012 runway collection at New York fashion week took a cultured trip to the east, and its beauty department didn’t lag behind. On first glance, you notice nothing but the deep and textured eyes. The subtle smokiness in the eye socket counteracts with the highlighted and contoured cheekbones. Akin to the clothes, the inspiration for the look comes from the textures and colours of India, according to Revlon’s Global Artistic Director, Gucci Westman.

Scents can be the olfactory manifestation of a single breed of flower, or of a whole garden of botanicals. They can evoke a particular mood. Or they can be a place, bottled up and captured like the simultaneous memory of all the sights and sounds of a single day. That's what Tom Ford's Lavender Palm is. It's a summer's day in California, pressed into a bottle. Putting on such a fragrance is the equivalent of an unusual form of teleportation. Spray. Close eyes. Breathe. You're there. It's the warmth of sun on your face, the elegance of silk on your skin, it's grass and leaves crushed underfoot; it's elegant, warm, and fresh.

Nude lips, model-like hair, runway ready eyes and perfect lips are all the basics of the beauty world, the must haves, the essentials. We all want to create the beauty looks we see on the runway but we might not know how, or might not have the products that are quintessential to the look. The following mini-tutorials skip the purchasing of the expensive products, but …

With braids encircling the head like a halo, this mix of subtle champagne shimmer, false lashes and pink lips looks divinely doe-eyed and angelic. But it's the kind of 2012 beauty look worth keeping up your sleeve: mix it up with some bouffant bed hair and it works just as well for creating that Brigitte Bardot youthful sex kitten look. Find out how to create it after the break.

So adept at applying her smokey black ‘panda eyes’ is Carine Roitfeld that little else is needed to make her trademark beauty look stand out. That does set the bar high for night-time occasions though – especially when they’re themed for irreverence. For a simple yet Gothic take on a 2012 beauty trend – i.e, a variation on the sequinned eyelids seen on the runway …

In an era where we aspire to effortlessness, it seems fitting that one of the most stand-out, unique beauty looks from spring 2012 was also one of the simplest. The eyes of Givenchy’s models were kept understated bar for the dot of a metallic sequin. Who better to show how it was done than supermodel Gisele. If you want to recreate the sequin dotted eye …

It's the beauty of Van Gogh's starry night reflected in your eyes. The edges of pitch black night illuminated into deep blue and shimmering purple by the celestial stars... As seen on the Rodarte spring 2012 runway, this look works for cool days or warm nights. Follow the beauty how to guide to create it yourself.

Trends in colour, clothing and cosmetics are closely interrelated. The reason for this is obvious: a direction in one is complimented by a correlating direction in another. That’s not to say that themes and styles can’t be mixed up and contrasted – that’s all part of the fun of fashion. But exploring ideas like which beauty looks will support – or indeed fulfil – the …