Backstage at Nicole Miller’s Spring 2016 Presentation With Butter London, Tomo Jidai & Mac Cosmetics

The streets have taken over New York Fashion Week and no one is safe, not even Nicole Miller.

Following the trend of urban/street inspired ready to wear this season, Nicole Miller’s Spring 2016 presentation featured a fun, youthful and bright collection of New York city inspired pieces. Reminiscent of the gritty 90’s, the collection was bold and edgy with slight delicate accents. graffiti and sequins dominated the show, with hints of florals and camo to fully capture the contrasts of the city. We went behind the scene to see how the looks came together with the right makeup, hair and nails.

First we spoke to lead makeup artist James Kaliardos for MAC who gave us the rundown on the models’ bold eyes. Kaliardos  said, “I’m calling it like an art gray eye. It just seemed arty to put gray on the eye because we’re starting out with this paint stick that MAC did that is gray and you kind of swipe it on the eye as a starter and then tap it into a sort of smokey shape and then we’re putting two different gray eyeshadows on top of that to set it, but also to keep it gray because gray can black really easily. It’s like this idea of gray paint on the eye but it’s done in a smoky way like this and clean and beautiful skin that’s matte and we’re doing a nude lip which is matte also and it’s called “lady be good” and it really dries to this matte finish. We’re contouring a little bit with a little bit of “pinch me” blush, but the whole look is very hot and deep and we’re putting this new black eyeliner on the inside water rim and it sort of blends into the eyeshadow and gives you this deep regard which is sexy and strong. It’s a big deal to me have strong looking woman even if it’s ethereal or even if it’s pretty, there has to be some strength behind doing makeup and presenting a woman out on the catwalk and out in the world. The color came from the collection, there’s a lot of color and graffiti in this collection and there’s this gray and I thought it reminded of industrial gray paint on a wall.”

Then we spoke to lead nail artist Katie Jane Hughes for Butter London who spoke about balancing the grunge with the softer tones within the collection. Hughes said, “the look is called sweet splat and it is a paint splatter manicure. I used “Cotton Buds,” which is a white as a base, two coats of that, and I popped a coffee stirring straw into black nail lacquer which is called “Union Jack Black” and I blew through it to allow it to splat onto the nail and on a few random nails I basically applied purple which a cool magenta-y purple, very pink, very purple, very bright that’s called “Easy Peasy” from a collection called “Lost in Leisure” so you get a nice kind of contrast. There’s a lot of texture going on in the collection and it’s a very hard collection and very street, but then there’s a lot of colors and flowers and soft girly kind of notes in there as well so we wanted the nail to look hard, but then I added a little bit of purple to add that element of girliness in there.”

Lastly we caught up with lead hairstylist Tomo Jidai as he spoke about the inspiration behind the look. Jidai said, “early 90s grungy dreadlocks, I spoke with Nicole and we talked about an early 90’s fashion magazines and models like Michele Hicks and it’s kind of inspired from that.” Check out the pics to get an inside look at the process:

Photo Credit: Nishat Baig