How delicate beauty looks completed Roksanda’s Regency-inspired London Fashion Week show
Make-up artist Dominic Skinner chats through the striking yet soft beauty looks for Roksanda’s new collection.
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Your support makes all the difference.Roksanda’s latest fashion show took a leaf out of the Bridgerton fashion playbook, combining Regency-inspired outfits with contemporary cuts and extravagant eveningwear.
To complement the fashion, Dominic Skinner, the show’s key make-up artist and director of artistry at M.A.C Cosmetics, said the beauty looks were to be “flawless and wealthy, but with a rawness to it.
“The models look like they are not made up, but instead perfectly untouched.”
Serbian-born, London-based designer Roksanda Ilincic established her brand in 2005, making a name for herself with a bold and sophisticated approach to womenswear.
Her designs have been frequently worn by the Princess of Wales and Hollywood stars like Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway, who have all fallen for her stand-out colour blocking, modern cuts and sculptural silhouettes.
For this collection, Roksanda took inspiration from the Bridgerton era. The show was certainly a step into spring, with the colour palette including burnt umber, as well as bursts of pale pink, yellow and tangerine orange.
“I’ve taken inspiration from the National Portrait Gallery to evoke that Regency quality and create something very pure,” Skinner said of the accompanying make-up looks.
“I’ve subtly contoured just enough to accentuate bone structure, using a traditional technique under the cheekbones, but we’re also contouring the upper inner corner of the eyebrow, where the brow bone and the nose meet, to create this pinched and poised feel.”
Skinner wanted to portray the delicacy and strength of Roksanda’s collection through the make-up.
“The skin is firm and matte in the centre of the face, but then slightly dewy on the cheekbones, as though she’s just splashed water from the basin to wake herself up and the remnants are glistening in the spring sun. There’s a real freshness to it,” he said.
“The skin has a pure and almost religious quality to it, and that’s juxtaposed with this rounded pillowy lip in a very dark blackened plum – a colour called smoked purple.”
Skinner wanted to leave the edge of the lip slightly brushed and not perfectly cut, to emulate the raw softness of the paintings he was inspired by in the National Portrait Gallery.
“These colours are quite cool and muted, but the look is very spring,” he explained.
“There’s a sharpness to it, as though the bright light has hit you but the air is still crisp – like the first day of spring.”
Skinner described the looks as “feminine, but fiercely strong”, adding: “It’s very balanced – that’s what modern femininity is – and that’s what we’ve tried to recreate in the make-up look.”
Set against the backdrop of the Brutalist Space House in Covent Garden, structure was key to Roksanda’s latest collection – with tailored eveningwear, draped shirts and sharp pleating.
The offbeat silhouettes Roksanda has become known for were well and truly present, with excessive sculptural bows and rustling feathered fringing seen on the runway.
Yet the potentially severe collection was softened with flowing silhouettes – each dress seemingly catching a breeze, demonstrating the sculptural volume of the garment in motion.
Celebrities sitting on the front row included Dame Vanessa Redgrave and actors Zawe Ashton and Joely Richardson.
They all championed Roksanda’s aesthetic through their fashion choices – Dame Vanessa in a smartly tailored coat, Ashton in a delicately draped bright orange dress, and Richardson playing around with modern colour clashing in a pink skirt suit with blue tights and a purple belt.