Of course the worst thing, if you’re going to wear clothing, is to look fat in it. This statement precludes the new Marc Jacobs show, obviously. But to the great credit of Jacobs’s originality, his collection included no illusion dresses, which have spawned more rapidly on the fall 2012 New York runways than Brangelina can adopt. Illusion dresses are the sheaths with contrasting panels of fabric on the sides that ought to make whoever’s wearing them look slimmer. Stella McCartney recently popularized the style with the help of Kate Winslet, who has worn the dress on more than one occasion, and even earned it a spot on the Today show, where the anchors discussed how magical the style is. (Us Weekly, that publication for the masses if there ever was one, has called it “ultra-flattering.”)

In a time when selling clothing, particularly the very expensive runway designer kind, is so very difficult, those showing at New York Fashion Week this season owe it to themselves to create slimming and therefore highly desirable pieces. And so: the illusion dress! Bebe and Topshop have already knocked it off, the Times noted in a recent “Critical Shopper” column in which writer Alexandra Jacobs professes she had wanted desperately to try on the dress, called the Octavia or the Miracle.  But, the sales person told her, they “sold out immediately.”

No matter, perhaps. More knockoffs are sure to emerge in the Zaras of the world. And next fall, you’ll have a whole new slew of the expensive kind to choose from. So here’s to looking thin, without which life would be horrible, obviously. Isn’t it nice to know so many of these designers have your back in that way?

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do you believe in magic?
,stella mccartney
,designers
,new york fashion week
,fall 2012
,fashion shows

Photographer Blake Hamilton continues shooting fully made-up faces backstage at the shows for us this season. Today, we examine Derek Lam’s feminine, librarian-inspired makeup look created by Estee Lauder’s Tom Pecheux. “You think about a woman going to this really beautiful cocktail party where everybody’s buttoned up, in black tie, and is very conservative, and she walks in in this really sexy dress with a bunny on her head you know, something just  a little skewed,” Estee Lauder’s global makeup stylist Rick DiCecca tells us before the show. “[Lam] did a very dark, very strong, very masculine brow for spring, and there was a juxtaposition between masculine and feminine. This season it’s very feminine.”

GET THE LOOK

Eyes

“It’s almost like a rock-and-roll eye, that messy smokiness, but no liner so it remains more feminine and less stark. We actually painted lashes under the eye with a very fine lip brush because the lights are so bright you want some definition. You just wet it and dip it in powder. It won’t be visible on the runway, but if you see it up close you’ll definitely see the distinct lines. It’s not something i personally would tell a client to do — it’s, how do you take it from the runway to realway? For realway, I would omit that, but I would still do the smokiness underneath.

You could do brown shadow and bronzer, mixed together, on the eye, but you want to bring it into the crease and pull it towards the outer corner of the eye, and then connect it underneath. What I always tell people to do is start the line on the bottom first and pull it from the center of the eye up toward the outer tip of the brow. That gives you the angle that you need so when you fill in the rest of the shadow you connect it, and you have that sort of cat-eye.

Tom has had this philosophy, for as long as I can remember, where he always does darker mascara on the top lashes and a lighter mascara on the bottom. And he feels — and it’s true — that it really lifts the eye up. So you still have a little bit  going on under the eyes, but you don’t want to do black there because especially if your lashes are long, it creates a shadow, so it makes you look darker under the eye.  So that’s why his philosophy is you always do something lighter. We used black on the top lashes and brown on the bottom. And we have a product launching in April, that you can pre-order on esteelauder.com, that has black on one end and a brown on the other. It’s the same formula but different brushes.”

Brows

“Because the look is a little bit more feminine, Tom didn’t do that heavy frame. He just brushed them up, groomed them, tweezed a few hairs if they needed it to keep the shape nice. We used a little brow wax to keep them in place. But overall, there was no color put in them unless the girl had bleached them — in that case we did a little bit of brown mascara so you can sort of get that definition back without looking like you have powder or pencil.”

Cheeks

“These are brand new blushes. Tom mixed Brazen Bronze and Alluring Rose, so kind of a warm and a cool neutralized, but he did it in a very sort of sculpted way. He didn’t do a real hard, bright cheek — it’s very sort of softly sculpted. You need that sort of balance between the dark heavy eyes and the pale lips — you don’t want to do a lot of blush.”

Lips

“The lips were kind of this creamy pink, so we started with this pink color here, Crystal Pink, and then he used this sort of creamy vanilla shade over it. And we used a white powder to really matte it down. It’s a very matte lip.”

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derek lam
,estee lauder
,tom pecheux
,beauty
,beauty marks
,makeup

Singer Whitney Houston has died at age 48. Her publicist confirmed the news to the AP. Few details are currently available but stay tuned for coverage as they emerge.

Update 8:23 p.m. The cause and location of Houston’s death are unknown, the AP reports. Houston was just rumored to be under consideration for a seat on the judging panel of The X Factor. And just Thursday, February 9, Houston attended a Grammys party in Hollywood, where she was photographed with her daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown.

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,r.i.p.

If you, like me, weren’t invited to the Alexander Wang show, it doesn’t matter: you’ll get a better view than the z-row seat or standing spot you would have been ceremoniously rewarded on this website, which hosts the livestream. The show has become such a frenzied fuss that getting a seat is about as great as getting a ticket to the Willy Wonka factory, and if you get a seat, getting a good one is unlikely, unless you’re one of The Most Important Fashion People Ever (I have seen Elle’s Kate Lanphear get a second-row seat at that show). Anyway, what was La Wang up to this season, with his clothing? The real reason everyone’s supposed to go out of their way for his show?

Black. A lot of black. Also, knee-high boots, puffy vests, and a plethora of pieces that looked to have been made from rain-slicker material. Instead of side-slits the skirts have front slits — a dubious trend since who wants to show off their inner thighs and knees? And can you sit down without flashing your panties? They’re problematic, design-wise and life-wise. Many of the tops, jackets, and coats were boxy, yet he did offer some fun motorcycle ones to go with those helmets he has the models carry down the runway last season. And in case you haven’t noticed enough sadomasochistic touches on the runways yet, he made sure the models’ mouths were sealed shut with mesh turtlenecks.

The highlight of the show was probably the cast, supermodels like Shalom Harlow and Gisele Budchen that apparently caused the crowd to burst into applause and cheers. But, how can we be sure it was those women who caused the celebration, and not audience members catching their reflection in the mirrors on the runway when the light was just right?

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alexander wang
,show & tell
,new york fashion week
,fall 2012
,designers

Barack Obama has said that “at the end of each day, it is Michelle — her moral voice, her moral center — that cuts through all the noise in Washington and reminds me of why I’m there in the first place.” Well, that’s how I feel about Diane Von Furstenberg’s personal tweets (denoted on her feed by the “love Diane” ending). At the end of each day, it’s Diane — her moral voice, her moral center — that cuts through all the noise at Fashion Week and reminds me of why I’m there in the first place. And let it be known that it is not because I love myself (fashion wouldn’t have that, silly!) but because people like her, who make tweets like that, are in charge of everything.

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diane von furstenberg
,designers
,twitter
,twitter glitter