I attended a Drag Masterclass the other week, that Illamasqua advertised on Facebook a few days beforehand, at their Flagship store off Carnaby Street. I've attended their 'Building Creativity' short course at their School of Make Up Art before which was a wonderful experience for me and just what I needed to boost my skills and creative play with make up. You may have heard of their Beauty School Drop Ins before, usually on a Sunday and so as a weekend counter-girl myself, I've never had the pleasure of attending; they are the perfect introduction into the brand and perfecting personal make up skills, so if you want to learn things from the best and nicest teachers, definitely head to Illamasqua Beak St on a Sunday they're running the drop ins!
In the short course I attended earlier this year, I would say we covered this technique of make up application when working on performance make up; we blocked out brows, we stuck on fake paper eyebrows & we contoured the living hell out of our models. But Drag, it's a little bit more special in my eyes, it takes all those elements and glamourises the hell out of it. You wanna do big and bold, do drag darling!
So, this model who was being demonstrated on by the lovely creative MUA's at Illamasqua Nilofar and Mika; we entered to the model having half her face made up dragstar style and Nilofar completed the rest with lots of pointers and photo ops. (Apologies my camera wasn't set up for the lighting appropriately, I am useless with perfecting it to picture perfect)
Above just shows the unblended highlighting Nilofar was talking us through and the wonderful thing is with drag, the contour is never too much! People seem to struggle with the concept of contouring, I get clients who want the Kim K look but they don't have a grasp on what it is. Imagine shadows and light framing your features beautifully, well instead of chasing that perfect shadowed/hollowed out cheek and highlighted bone, let's paint it on your face! And if you haven't already seen all the tutorials and images out there of 'everyday' (as opposed to drag) contour & highlight, google it now! It will look a lot like the above image, t's all in the blending darling!
Love a good stuck on brow, why struggle to match up your brows when you can cut out 2 identical brows in any fancy paper/material of your choice! I'm currently holding onto some metallic leather-ette to play brow-games with (not for my everyday look I might add).
The thing to remember is with this, is that it is your going out make up trebled, ain't nothin' subtle about drag my dears. And that, is the fun part! And let's put misconceptions aside, as you can definitely tell, the model used above is a gorgeous female. Drag make up is for the art of transforming man to woman, but all it really is is a dramatic smoky eye and HD brows amped up! Hell, Kimmy K probably went on some drag tutorials to master her contouring and smoky eye techniques.
Aaaand of course, with a visit to Illamasqua comes a haul. Some Skin Base for my kit in 02 as they were sold out when I ordered all the others in their cray-Z 50% off Twitter follower sale some months back (you Illamafia will remember it fondly). Skin Base lift concealers, they launched with their collection The Sacred Hour in September and which I first purchased in this haul here. I've hit the pan on that, it's that good and I wanted the white equivalent in White Light for my kit. Despite the face I haven't even hit the pan on their white under eye concealer which is in my kit, but the Skin Base Lift is streaks ahead.
I also picked up the 'Lush' lashes I lusted over upon release but couldn't prioritise or justify it to myself on my last haul given that I hardly wear lashes despite owning billions of gorgeous pairs. A new light pinky lipstick colour for myself, as I'm overloaded with dark lipsticks but I don't usually make space for the lighter shades so it was time to take a walk on the light side. SO pleased with it, next post = swatches.
Ditto the blusher essentially, I just wanted it's prettiness to come home with me. It's called Tremble and it's light and pretty and fabulous. Except when I got home and realised it's quite like my Bobbi Brown blush in Pink Coral, except it's not, and I needed and wanted it. I swear I need it.
A couple of their new pencils, re-packaged and apparently an improved formula; Mika told us that essentially law/trading standards or whoever these boring people are, dictate that they must allocate lips/eyes etc to each pencil. But don't be hemmed in by this, use your make up wherever and however you like. Lipstick as an eye base? Go for it.
I picked up the first (purple on left) and last (coral) pencils. The coral shade in Power is exactly the kind of punchy shade you just wouldn't find at any other brand, in lipstick maybe, in pencil, no; ditto the purple as it goes. I love you Illamasqua.
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