The Toronto Star - Ah, the '80s.
Posted by: Josee on Nov 26, 2009
Founder and CEO
Founder and CEO
Publication: The Toronto Star
Date: Saturday, October 31 2009
It was a time when young people were addicted to love, living perpetually in a neon-coloured Funkytown, dancing on the ceiling and doing the Conga.
It was a time when girls just wanted to have fun and were simply irresistible with their Bette Davis eyes.
After a couple of decades of neutrals and monochromatics, the fashion and beauty industries are finding new inspiration in this decadent generation of colour schizophrenia and leg warmers.
"People are coming out of their shell and not afraid of colour," said Melissa Gibson, senior artist at MAC cosmetics.
Makeup palettes are opening up to bright, bold, saturated hues like blues, purples, greens and hot pinks, experts said, and formerly colour-phobic women are daring to think outside the brown eye shadow-box.
"We're seeing more of an adventurous streak than we've seen in the last five to 10 years, which is really fun," added kus Timothy, a colour consultant at Sephora in the Eaton Centre.
In the same way shoulder pads - once banished to the fashion morgue as a horrible, unmentionable mistake - have been exhumed, the full, bushy eyebrow, multicoloured eyelid, and competing features have also been resurrected.
At the Toronto LG Fashion Week this month, freelance makeup artist Heather Snowie, for instance, said models were sporting unsculpted, natural, clean brows.
"Brows are fuller than in the past," Snowie said. "Models are letting some of the hair grow back in for a stronger brow. Think Brooke Shields and her full, soft brow in the '80s. The natural brow is coming back."
A strong brow is crucial, added Timothy, in order to provide the right frame for intense, dramatic, vibrant eyes.
"Don't rock bright colours without shaping the brows or you run the risk of washing out the face and looking unfinished. You need to take the eye all the way."
Eyes are also harkening back to the generation when colour was on valium, only in a perhaps more muted, softened, 2009 way.
Makeup artist Josee Beaudoin remembers the '80s with fondness, having started her career in this decade as a product of the generation herself.
"Oh la la la la," she said as she conjured up memories of her '80s self.
"I was spending a good hour every day doing my own makeup because it was really elaborate.
"I experimented a lot."
She created winged eyes, sweeping blocks of colours like blues, purples and greens across the lid and beyond, outlining the whole thing in black to intensify the look, finishing it off with false eyelashes.
She was also heavy-handed with the blush, contouring her cheekbones and the apples of her cheeks with bright pink.
It was her tribute to her favourite '80s icon Pat Benatar, whose look she often mimicked.
"It was a really extravagant, elaborate, bold time," she said. "It was so much fun and influenced my creativity and artistry."
But in order to update the look and make it current, start small, Beaudoin suggests.
"Use one element of inspiration from the '80s, like the lips."
Gibson likes MAC's purple eye shadow Devil May Care as it has a metallic silver highlight, resonant of the frosted '80s eye.
"I don't think frost ever went away," Gibson said. "Its texture is so much easier to work with than others, like matte, which drags on the eye. And a frosted glaze works on everyone."
Meanwhile, though the smoky eye isn't a signature of the 1980s, runways and magazines are applying this technique to bright hues like greens, purples and blues, blending the two looks, Timothy added.
Cheeks are also highly contoured, another clear throwback to the '80s.
Makeup artists are using up to three colours on the cheeks to make them pop, says Timothy: An all-over colour, a highlighter above the cheekbone, and a darker colour underneath to contour.
"That's a huge trend from the '80s."
And then that frosted pink lipstick women of that time loved so, has also taken on an updated, bolder look in the form of cream textures, shades of fuchsia and even purplish, black hues.
"Before, purple and black were seen as Goth, but now it has elegance to it," Timothy said.
Lips are a great place to try something new, added Snowie, who is also seeing intense fuchsias and deep, winey colours.
"It's not so much of a commitment but it can definitely change how you feel about yourself," she said. "The other day, I put on a red lipstick, a colour I haven't worn in ages, and I felt like an absolute diva."
Perhaps the best reincarnation for the '80s look is the wildly unpredictable and eccentric Lady Gaga, Gibson said.
Be it her pleather, plastic, studded or belted exercise body suits, or boxy football shoulder pads, the current pop princess of preposterousness-slash-catchy-radio-tunes is a walking ambassador for the 1980s.
Pamela Anderson also does the look well, Gibson said, but for another reason.
"It's kind of like she never left," she said. "She's got it full on, with the purple eyes, liner and pink cheeks."
Another '80s concept that's been resurrected from the canon of beauty don'ts, is allowing features to compete for attention. For years, the cardinal rule of makeup application was to focus on one single feature, playing up the eyes, for instance, at the expense of a muted mouth or vice versa. But the rules are changing, Timothy said.
"Now, it's more acceptable to do more than one feature on the face."
For Gibson, the 1980s were characterized by permissiveness, wealth, creativity and excess. "And makeup was part of that. The past couple of years we saw utilitarian makeup, due to the economy. But people are sick of it, now that we're slowly emerging from it," she posited. "That conjures up feelings of the '80s again. Between makeup and fashion, that sure was a happy time."