The looks of London Fashion Week: Manly makeup, Sith-approved eyeshadows, and throwback Westwood makeup rule

A mouthful of a title, I know — but it’s exactly how I feel about a recent adventure to six-degree Londontown. For all that I’ve witnessed during the week-long stay, it’s the most accurate description I could cram into a headline — and that’s just talking about the makeup.

MAC Cosmetics flew me over to the UK just a day before the crazy whirlwind that is London Fashion Week started. Armed with only names of the brand PRs from all over the world, I was prepared for my all-access backstage experience. On the other hand, I was also looking forward to a bit of on-street celebrity hounding (obvious targets were Burberry’s current darling Jamie Campbell Bower, Harry Styles a.k.a. Mr. Kendall Jenner a.k.a. Miss Much A Boob About Nothing, Bradley Cooper a.k.a. Mr. Suki Waterhouse, and the fashion editors). I failed miserably at this attempt, despite hanging out in the cold and rain in an unfashionably brown but very warm puffer coat. I saw but one model off-duty on my third day — Sam Rollinson, whom I was alone with at this souvenir shop at the far end of Baker Street called It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll. She looked just like everyone else, without as much as a hint that earlier that day, she had walked on the Dark Side for Preen’s Darth Vader-studded autumn/winter 2014 collection.

Held at the National Theater, which is a good seven stops from my hotel in Knightsbridge, the Preen show was a good way to start a day of nerding off. Call time was at 7:30 a.m., and this was probably why it was one of the least crazy of the lot, at face value at least. After a freezing, brisk walk over the Embankment footbridge against the backdrop of a London sunrise, I arrived at the barely occupied entrance of the theater. A lovely, very calm door girl — the polar opposite of another door man I had encoutered at another show — showed me to the backstage, where models were already doing their runthrough, which is basically going over their blocking and pacing their walks to go with the music.

Inside, a glaring sign caught my attention: “You are a hot sci-fi geek,” it said, perhaps to get the models into character. I spotted a bunch of Stormtroopers (it was that kind of a rabbit hole), and I asked one, “Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?” It stared at me blankly with its glazed, green, LED eyes. “Let’s take a selfie,” I told the droid, and it obliged.

On the other side of the room was the makeup area, and it was as crazy and colorful and bright as I imagined a makeup area would be. MAC’s Val Garland, head makeup artist for the Preen show, emerged from somewhere in the maze of mirrors. If the name rings a bell, it may be because she’s THE Val Garland who was hired by YSL as artistic advisor, as well as requested by Lady Gaga and Nicola Formichetti for the Alejandro music video. She also did the prosthetics on the Born This Way single sleeve, and Gaga’s live performance of the song at the Grammys.

She told us about the Preen autumn/winter look, and no, the models looked nothing like intergalactic villains. The makeup being “a little off,” as Val put it, is the perfect complement to designers Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi’s interpretation of geek-chic — placing Vader’s face on otherwise delicate silk blouses and dresses. How she describes the girls of Preen: “She is the cool girl, she is Rule Britannia. The makeup is very real. It’s skin, it’s fresh. We used two shades on the eyes. The thing about Preen is it’s quite quirky. So we used a dirty mustard on the socket line and a murky silver on the lid — they’re off colors. We gave the girls a brushed-up brow, and natural lips.” It’s off, but it’s a good off, and with it, Preen may just have officially announced that geek is the new black.

On the opposite spectrum of chill were the first shows held at Somerset House, a grandiose collective of Neoclassical architecture on the south side of the Strand in central London. The venue overlooked the River Thames, which meant there was no refuge from the wind and rain, but this didn’t stop the girls and boys in bunny costumes and samurai outfits from posing for a photo op. This was Day One, and as expected from any Day One, it was, mildly put, crazy. Photographers circled the venue, waiting for photogenic subjects. Members of the crew, from makeup to lights to security, were all over the place. Umbrellas poked people’s eyes. All sheds were packed with impeccably dressed and very wet people. I arrived an hour and a half early for the Central Saint Martins graduation show, and just took in the sights. If anything, it was a great lesson in layering — staying warm, staying dry and staying in fashion.

Against the backdrop of the Somerset House walls was a huge tent built to host the shows. Drawing the crowd for the night was the Central Saint Martins graduation show, which is, of course, not just any graduation show, as it is not just another fashion school — it’s where powerhouses like Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and John Galliano are made batch by fashionable batch. This is where the weird-cool-geeky-badass remix was kicked off, with graduating designers Ondrej Adamek, Michael Power, Jessica Mort, Graham Fan, Drew Henry, Teruhiro Hasegawa, Fiona Blakeman and Anita Hirlekar presenting interesting pieces.

Backstage, I had to blink to make sure my eyes weren’t operating on slow shutter — the pace was so fast, everything was just a blur of color or flash of light. Very bearded and seriously cool MAC senior artist Pablo Rodriguez headed the makeup team. Ironically, he specializes in tattoo painting and body art makeup, though he has also worked on several magazine editorials as well as with celebrity clients like Lenny Kravitz, Rachel Weisz, Isabella Blow, Lena Headey, Patricia Arquette and Daphne Guinness.

For the Central Saint Martins show, Pablo created a look that would fit the different looks presented by CSM graduates, giving the models barely-there makeup, almost taking literally the no-makeup makeup trick. “Skin care is a lot more relevant here than finding the right foundation,” said Pablo. “We made it really sheer so it looks like real skin. There’s a big focus on making it super natural. It’s a very natural look, much like male grooming, so it’s tidying up any redness or any darkness under the eyes. We did the same makeup for boys and girls. It’s exactly the same.”

How he achieved the look: “We used tinted moisturizer which evens out skin color, and if that isn’t enough coverage, I go for concealer on top. For fashion shows, you don’t really need that much — you can’t touch it up last minute. We used MAC Strobe Cream to give the skin a little bit of sheen. We didn’t use anything on the eyes and just a little bit of clear lip gloss on the lips.”