It's au naturale spring

Beauty is getting muted with cleaner tones this spring. Giles Deacon’s show had no make-up with minimal contouring and textured side plaits while Proenza Schouler too opted for straight centre-parted hair with minimal make-up. Sticking to the brand’s strongest attribute of minimalism, Calvin Klein had pared down make-up with pale lips which were complemented by casually touselled hair.

Ralph Lauren showed pastel shadow, pink, blush and frosted lips, Burberry’s models strutted with a pink eyeshadow and hair which again had a very casual lived-in feel. If Fendi had peach lips, Prada showed bright shadows in a palette of yellow, green and lilac. We spoke to some our leading make-up artists to understand if these spring trends work well for Indian skin tone too.

Effortless elegance
Virginia Holmes, make-up artist, Fat Mu says, “Many designers at the fashion weeks have shown subdued make-up, focused more towards clean and bright skin with just a tint of colour on eyes and lips rather than the neon looks that seem to be so popular of late.

The underlying concept of most of the looks has been effortless elegance, almost casual. I think Indian women would be very happy recreating a lot of these looks.The wash and go kind of hair suits most Indian women, although we see many wearing their hair poker straight, a lot of them choose to just leave it as it is.”

As for make-up, peach and orange lips have been big for a while now and women seem to be quite fond of them! “Eyeshadows in soft pastel colours may not be the best for an Indian skin tone and would look chalky but they can always go for the pearl or shimmer equivalent of the colours. For women who are just about the kohl rimmed eyes, there is good news, the runway at Jonathan Saunders and Topshop Unique saw smudged black make-up and kohl,” Holmes adds

We need drama
“There is a mix of beauty looks — natural and dramatic ones with dark eyes and strong mouth colours. We Indians definitely need a little bit of more kajal application. “Yellow eye shadow doesn’t work for us because it blends very fast with our skin and fades out.

An earthy colour palette suits the Indian skin tone more. We’ve been using orange peachy lips for a very long time. Also, the Indian hair is very stubborn and can’t be left untouseled. Straight Indian hair looks boring and needs to be treated for that element of drama. All in all the spring will be about simple make-up with a strong mouth,” says make-up artist Vipul Bhagat.

Make-up artist Kapil Bhalla seconds that. “Internationally for caucasian hair and skin, the fresh and pretty works beautifully but it doesn’t really translate well for Indian skin. Coral lips are here to stay and so are fuschia and matt colours. Also the colour blocked graphic eyes are huge. The Indian hair is very thick and an out of the bed look on an Indian girl needs a lot of work,” says he.