The NY Times T-Magazine featured a photography shoot by photographer Greg Kessler of some of the Fashion Week Models. What made this pictoral special was the interactive feature allowing the viewer to move a bar to see the before and after make-up transformations.
Unlike a Covergirl makeover before-and-after spread that you might find in the covers of a glossy magazine, the models looked far better without their heavy make-up than with.
Sigrid Agren, the first model featured on the pages, looks like she has two black eyes with her make-up on, which is more than likely a result of the trend of applying thick red and blue eye shadow two inches beneath the eyes. (due to the interactive feature, she is not pictured here.)As one commenter put it,
Without make-up, seems like an intelligent young woman who it might be nice to have a chat with. With make-up, some scuzzy Lady Gaga follower with Tic Tacs for brains.
You have to give the make-up artist some credit for having the ability to make a truly naturally beautiful woman look ugly.
For this particular feature, all but two of the article's commenters agreed that the woman looked better prior to the ridiculously heavy eye shadow being applied; the only dissenter was a plastic surgeon so I won’t give his/opinion that much credibility.
Sigrid Agren wasn’t the only one during Fashion Week to be over-loaded with make-up; according to this article in the NYT smoky eyes (as pictured above) are “in”. While I don’t have a “before” picture for this model, I can almost guarantee you that she did not look like a garish Zombie before her run down the catwalk.
Are we really supposed to believe that making the eye shadow and mascara the highlight of the face rather than the woman will really bring out her beauty? Those of us in our 30’s and above try to hide our “dark circles” that sometimes pop up in the morning or late at night- now it seems as if we can accentuate them in a ridiculous manner and the younger women can “mock” us in a way by hiding their natural beauty with too much eyeshadow..
I understand that runway models are dressed elaborately, and that their make-up is not necessarily there to highlight their beauty, but the fact of the matter is that women and the fashion magazines follow the examples of fashion week as exemplified by the popularity of “smoky eyes”.