Runway Beauty: Futuristic Metallic Brows at Dior Spring 2014

All eyes—and iPhones—were pointed skyward at Dior’s spring show at the Musée Rodin this afternoon, and for good reason, as guests stared with wonder at the tropical rainforest Raf Simons had commissioned inside the cavernous open-air tent. Hanging tendrils of wisteria in bright shades of purple, fuchsia, and green, plus banana leaves, birds of paradise, and bare branches sprayed in the designer’s signature neon orange and Pepto-pink created a jungle canopy that elicited a resounding “wow.” When the first model came down the runway, it was her eyebrows—cast in metallic gold, for a look that was at once classical (as in, antiquity) and futuristic—that drew similar smiles. 

“It’s good, isn’t it?” whispered makeup artist Pat McGrath conspiratorially backstage before the show. She and her team had spent the morning bleaching models’ brows before studiously grooming (and gluing) them into place with a glimmering mix of liquid gold pigment and loose microglitter. “It’s sort of a ropey, brocaded effect,” she said. Some models—Edie Campbell, Sasha Pivovarova, Julia Nobis, for example—wore just the brow; for others, like Suvi Koponen, McGrath added further decoration, painting broad swaths of metallic gold cream across the lid that extended just beyond the outer corner and beneath the lower lash-line; in some cases, she added fine lines of dreamy mint green and creamsicle-orange liner to the look, too. “Now, do me a favor: brushstrokes,” she instructed one of her assistants, as she inspected a nearly finished model. “It’s not to be perfect; you’ll lose the romance, darling.” Moving on to another face, she mused to an assistant: “She could look good with a brow and an eye. She’d look like a piece of jewelry.” 

That was, not coincidentally, the effect of the finished product on the runway—with those gleaming brows set against radiant complexions (bottles of Dior Nude Skin-Glowing Makeup and Diorskin Nude Shimmer bronzing compacts were scattered across the makeup tables backstage) and lips dabbed with little more than a touch of balm. 

“Raf has a real sense of modernity—it’s never retrospective,” summed up hairstylist Guido Palau, who was slicking models’ hair into crisp side-parts, drawing the ends into tight knots at the nape of the neck, which he shellacked into place and secured with a healthy dose of Redken Hardwear gel and Forceful 23 spray. “It’s a little bit boyish, androgynous.” Of his ongoing collaboration with the designer, just over a year into his tenure at Dior, he said, “We’re really finding our voice for his idea of the Dior woman without that labored, archival feeling. It feels really today.”