Illamasqua Day

During Welcome Week we had a visit from cult British beauty brand Illamasqua. Spob O'Brien (Head of Professional Development), Charlotte Savoury (Key MUA and International Brand Ambassador) and Josephine O'Brien (Events Manager) came in to give a talk and live demonstration. This was an extremely inspirational and valuable experience.
Spob gave us a really interesting insight into the industry from her own personal experience, talking us through the different routes her career has taken and giving us some very helpful advice, whilst Charlotte began a demonstration in which she recreated the look worn by the models at the Sorapol SS15 show. Having worked for Sorapol since I was 16 I knew the story behind this specific look and had seen it on the runway at the SS15 show, and it was really interesting to see Charlotte recreate it with an Illamasqua twist (a gorgeous green lip using Illamasqua lipstick in Apocalips and Illamasqua sheer lipgloss in Violate)

The technique Charlotte used is often referred to as "spotlighting" and this look in particular really focused on complementing the way the models faces were lit down the runway. The aim was to highlight in a way that creates a consistent light down the centre of the models face, working beautifully with the catwalk spotlight. Most of the products used were from Illamasqua's new collection Once... which exudes decadence and romanticism, and this in itself coincided perfectly with Sorapol's Marie Antoinette inspired collection. 

Sorapol SS15 Show

Once the demonstration and talk was over, we were then given a makeup challenge. We had to get into small groups and design and execute a makeup look in a short amount of time, working only with the products provided and inventing a story to go with our character. As soon as my group saw the colour palette we all immediately had the same idea. The colours provided were very earthy tones; matte browns, plums, coppers and rust, and all three of us associated these with woodland, swamps, marshland and the New Orleans Bayou. None of us had our brushes, so we decided to go for a very feral look, as though our character had been abandoned and lost in the woods for years. Thinking deeper into the idea of the New Orleans voodoo culture we wanted to add a more tribal, supernatural element and used white foundation (Illamasqua Skin Base in shade 01) for markings around the face. We also used the white foundation to coat our models eyelashes to contrast the dark brown eyeshadow. We decided to give the look a more feral appearance by backbrushing the eyebrows, and we used Illamasqua Hydra Veil and a cotton bud to do this. I feel that our group connected very well, and worked efficiently together due to the fact that we all had the same concepts and combined all of our ideas in a creative way, and I really enjoyed this task.