Backstage at Myer’s Autumn Winter Fashion 2012 Launch with Illamasqua’s Clare Lille

That’s a mouth full of a title isn’t it? Anyways, last week I was lucky enough to be invited by Illamasqua to interview the very lovely Clare Lille backstage as she prepped the models for the Myer Autumn Winter Fashion Show for 2012.

I also managed to pick up a few tips from Kevin Murphy’s team (responsible for the hair for all models that night). The style for the girls that night was a braided fish tail look, that was actually sewing together to make the look far more put together and secure, minus the need to use a million hair pins. As for the men, their hair was first treated with dry shampoo and given a tousled appearance. Very Burberry-like.

After which I was finally able to sit down with Clare, whom is truly a remarkable lady. Clare admits that her makeup style leans on the more natural to vintage style, if you have a look through her portfolio you’ll find that she uses a great technique known as Skin Sketching to help add natural shadows and highlights to a model’s face. She uses neutral coloured pencils from the Illamasqua range to carefully and accurately create dimensions. It’s similar to how I usually use highlighting powders and bronzers, only with far more precision.

You know I’m addicted to really out there crazy looks, so I asked Clare if she had a dream shoot. She mentioned wanting to explore 3D makeup with a particular gun that produces silicon, which would allow her to create 3D veins on skin. Or even create scales like those on reptiles. It did get my own creative juices flowing, now I’m keen to learn more about this silicon gun for my own Book of Fable chapters 😀

Finally, because I’m a sticky beak, I asked her what her makeup pet peeves were. And they came as no surprise, when people use incorrectly matched foundation and when people use heavy shimmer products as a natural highlight.

All in all it was a really interesting insight to see what goes on backstage such a well known massive fashion event! 🙂 I wish I had been there earlier to see everything unravel and to watch the show, maybe one day 🙂 Thanks to Lucas Dawson for all the unwatermarked photos and to Illasmaqua for inviting me backstage 🙂

Crowds of people outside!