While backstage at Tanya Taylor, Uzo was so much of a wealth of information on the overall look, and techniques used, we couldn’t cut her short.
The Look: “What we have here is the beauty look for Tanya Taylor for this season. I’m sure you already know that her collection was inspired by her recent trip to East Africa, where a lot of the prints and textures that you see in the collection literally were influenced by the Maasai tribe and this beautiful princess that she saw there. When I had a talk with her for the make up test and she told me it was her first time to Africa but her parents lived there before, I just had an inspiration. Meryl Streep came to my mind from “Out of Africa”. That amazing movie where she played a Danish baroness that moved to Kenya in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I thought that was just the most appropriate beauty look, inspiration for today’s show. I loved the make up in the 1920’s and 1930’s where it was really more about a beautiful stained look with a little bit of color on the cheeks. Against the backdrop of very polished skin and that worked so well with the Tanya Taylor aesthetic. Because we all know, we’ve all come to love and come to expect that beautifully polished, illuminated skin. And because it’s spring why not a little bit of color on the lips and cheeks. Not, contour. A nice flush, healthy flush of color on the apples of the cheeks and that’s pretty much it. I like to call it rich girl beauty. Where it’s very pampered, well taken care of skin. But just a little bit of color and nicely groomed brows.”
Lips: “What we use from NARS is the velvet matte lip in “Never say Never” [on all the models] which is a beautiful pink, lilac. And what we did is kind of just stained the lip. We didn’t go full on. And one thing I love is that this is a beautiful lip color that works on all complexions. I love it, it’s very pretty and very appropriate for Spring.”
“We have a new blush from the spring collection and we’re actually being a little editorial. We’re not actually using it on the cheeks, we’re using it on the lips. Just for a pop because I wanted the lip to be super matte. What we did was just popped it right in the center to give that nice soft matte finish. At NARS there are no rules. Especially at fashion week. I always recommend that your lips are properly hydrated. Maybe prep with a lip balm prior to trying the blush on the lips.”
Cheeks: On the cheeks it’s all about, again, illumination, but we had fun this season by adding a little more color. We used NARS illuminator in “Copocabana” on fairer skins. And “Laguna”for darker skins. And then this season we used the dual intensity blush and we played with different tones. And we used our react shield brush to get just a soft wash of color. Just on the apples. So what I like in today’s world where the everyday woman that really wants to blend is to always use a highlighter color to blend on top. And that actually just heightens the illumination.
Eyes: “The eyes we did nothing. Just mascara. We kept the eyelids clean because the focus is the lips and the cheeks. We didn’t want to do too much because usually you want to find a balance. The balance was the cheek and the lips and nothing at the eyes. Definitely because we don’t have any eye color, we decided to make sure that the eye brows were very groomed.”
Brows: “Depending on the model. We’re definitely brushing them up on all the models, but for a model that maybe doesn’t have very even brows then we’ll add just a little bit of color or a tint of brow gel.”