Fashion Week day 1 beauty report

The M.A.C. look at Salasai. Photo / Supplied.

New Zealand fashion's reputation for being dark and brooding spilled over to the beauty looks seen on day one of Fashion Week, with many hair and makeup teams working in tandem with designers who don't pander to pretty. Medieval grunge summed up the mood of several shows, with others taking a post-apocalyptic approach. By mixing the "beauty" with the black, an off-kilter collision of visions saw some striking looks.

Here's our highlights, and if you don't want to take inspiration from appearance ideas that look a bit like they've come from the ends of the earth, check out our fashion gallery pictures of the pretty plaited updo at the New Generation show and our separate write-up of the beautifully glam beauty look at Trelise Cooper.

Salasai
Pairing "off" colours with classic style, is an eccentric but eminently wearable way to play. It sums up both the beauty look and the Salasai aesthetic.

The makeup brief from show stylist and Viva contributing fashion editor Dan Ahwa was of a wealthy bourgeois woman with an eccentric twist. M.A.C. artist Kiekie Stanners keyed the show, designing a clean and polished makeup look, with "mad" colour around the eye. Think ochres, mustards and dusky peaches; shades seen in the show's signature print. Nails were coated in similar tones.

She used a fan brush to spread the eye colour, choosing Chromacake, topped with bronze pigment, to add a gilded look. Lips were an off-tone nude.

Hair by Stephen Marr's Matt Benns was tightly pulled back into a coiled bun, for an elegant offset to the unexpected eye colours.

The M.A.C. look at Nom*D included black ears. Picture / Supplied.

NOM*d

The show kept reminding me of the old Vincent Ward movie

The Navigator

, about time-travellers leaving their plague stricken medieval world to emerge through the centre of the earth to wander in the Antipodes. From the felt caps flared low over the models' ears - those that didn't have the appendages painted black or white - to the dark wool drapery, NOM*d's garb was matched by hair of other-worldly appearance.

It was strung down in a ribboned array, with sections twisted out and up like a chopstick ponytail. The Stephen Marr team, led by Chong Li, used resin and hairspray to create this matted, spiky mix. M.A.C's makeup artists were too busy with the Black Death ears to worry much about face paint. Funny how seeing models free of mascara and obvious colour, looks somehow "unnatural."

The makeup look from M.A.C. at Lela Jacobs. Photo / Supplied.

Lela Jacobs

Back to the Dark Ages, this time with a monastic twist. More headpieces, this time a leather semi skull cap tipped down onto the forehead like a penance, as the models, heads a little bowed, filed forth like the walk of death from a plague village.

The designer's theme was something post-dystopian. The doomed had a sort of compelling beauty, draped in their layers of black and natural matted wool and black cheesecloth, with surprisingly perky plaits framing faces half-masked in a miasma of sooty sepia pigment. This was another M.A.C and Marr combo and again would not have looked out of place on a film set.

The makeup look by M.A.C. at Jimmy D for the Underground installation. Picture / Supplied

Underground

No surprise a show in a concrete silo is going to have a hard edge. The look among this group installation nodded to grunge, but with an edge from the likes of eyeliner applied just as a sharp accent in the inner-eye corner and as angled lines turning faces into canvases.

A photo of the makeup and hair at the Stolen Girlfriends Club show. Photo / Supplied.

Stolen Girlfriends Club

More black magic, this time referencing the 20th century, not nearly a millennium ago. The hair by Sydney-based session stylist Richard Kavanagh had that greased, grunge, look that these days suggests layers of products rather than being one of the great unwashed. Offset with M.A.C.'s high-shine red lip, there was no doubt this was a fashion look.

In fact, Kavanagh recommends wet-look hair as a great day or night style heading into summer, with the added bonus that it can make any outfit look editorially cool. His references from the Stolen design team included David Lynch's character Laura Palmer, but he wanted to make the home-coming queen from the seminal TV series Twin Peaks more modern less 90s. To do this, he parted tough wet-look hair off centre and swept it strongly back from the face on one side and flipped more nonchantly on the other.

Male models were styled individually so their hair had a lived-in masculine feel. To get the female models' look add a few drops of oil to dry or slightly dam mid-lengths to soften the hair and then dampen it with mousse (Try Redken Diamond Oil and Full Effect 04 mousse). Comb into place and clip on the sides with long clips to hold it down while it dries. You can speed drying by using a diffuser attachment on a hot hairdryer. Once hair is dry, take out clips and spray generously.

See runway highlights from the Stolen Girlfriends Club show here:

Image 1 of 11: Stolen Girlfriends Club. Picture / Getty Images

- VIVA