Big! Bouncy! Coily! These are the words lead hairstylist Jawara Wauchope used to describe the beauty at this year’s Victoria’s Secret fashion show. “There are all types of hair in the show,” he tells ESSENCE exclusively backstage. “We’re showcasing diverse beauty,” and giving a little oomf,” the stylist continues, before sharing how excited he was to be working his first live VS show in his hometown of Brooklyn at the Steiner Studios. “We’re making the girls look fab,” he says, adding that the team used Bumble&bumble. products to bring the looks to life.
This same message translated into the makeup, which was led by none other than the legendary Pat McGrath. “Adam Selman just wanted the girls to be really glowing and beautiful like they already are,” she says about the creative director’s vision of the beauty. “He just really wanted them to be themselves.”
To execute the look, she started with her PAT McGRATH LABS Skin Fetish: Sublime Perfection Foundation, and in the same range, the concealer and a little of the blurring under-eye powder. “I just wanted the girls to just look gorgeous, and glowing, and beautiful,” she says. “But, it really is about a beautiful, light smoke on the eye.”
Using her PermaGel Ultra Glide Eye Pencil in the shade “BLK Coffee” and her holiday eyeshadow palette, McGrath turned the models into semi-smokey earth angels with smudged lids. Meanwhile, the lips were more celestial than the cloudy eye makeup, applying a neutral brown long-wear lip liner hours before the show, which survived under Lust: Gloss in the glittering bronze pink shade “Bronze Venus.”
“Gorgeous, luscious, and glowing,” she shouts as she finished the Angels in her famous Skin Fetish: Glass 001 Legendary Glow Setting Spray followed by the blurring setting spray to lock it all in. “To see all of the girls again who are really close friends and working with Adam is an amazing moment for us all,” McGrath tells us. “There’s a lot of pluses,” she says. The main one being that, as McGrath adds, “we’re having fun.”
