BWA Chats To: Illamasqua Make-Up Director Nicola Burford

The BWA team was lucky enough to have a sneak peek backstage (my heart was a flutter when spied Rachel Rutt!) and a chat to the Make Up directors from Illamasqua on their looks for the Myer Spring Summer Collection Show for 2011/2012 and their top tips for beauty this summer.

What is the inspiration for the looks you have created for Myer’s Spring Summer Collection Show for 2011/2012?

The look was inspired by the unique landscapes, reflective heat and environmental architecture of the Western Australian desert and land forms of The Pinnacles.

The textures, colours and mirages and mutable forms you would experience in that landscape are transformed on the face. Perfected, luminous skin is highlighted with glass like reflective gloss and cream shimmer, eyes are contoured in a halo of sand coloured powder with pops of either glistening sunset pink, sunburnt orange or white heat in a colour ombre.

Lips and brows are muted so attention is focussed on the eyes and skin. It’s a gentle, graceful yet powerful modern makeup and approach to colour and texture.

What are the key beauty trends our readers must try for Summer 2011?

SUPER-PERFECTED FOUNDATION!! Our Skin Base to be released on the 22nd August is perfect for this. Plus bright accents on lips or eyes – or both!

Also, on the street ‘colour–clash’ will be huge this Summer, orange eyes/ pink lips, blue eyes/ orange lips. The secret for this is perfectly finished skin and lips applied with a brush and liner for an immaculate block of colour.

Your number one beauty tip?

Get your foundation right – it’s the secret to any great look. Have a professional artist colour match your skin and use a professional brush to blend and buff.

One product you just can’t live without?

Eye-brows define the face. Brow and lash gel to groom the shape, and for extra definition an eye-brow cake applied with an eye-brow brush. Even on a make-up free Sunday morning, this is my asbsolute essential.

Finally, if you could have Breakfast with anyone in the world, who would it be?

Michelle Obama. Most of us cannot take ourselves into the perfect-bubble of a spiritual guru. In a political environment, she maintains her values, recognises the things she has power to change and is an example to young women of holding a vision, and having the courage and commitment to create it.

Check out our snaps of all the hustle and bustle behind the scenes at the Myer Spring Summer Collection Show