Is this the end of Instagram makeup?

MANILA, Philippines - Val Garland was doing a hair and makeup test to complete Gareth Pugh’s autumn/winter “pillow face” narrative from last fall (where she covered the face with tights as though “Joan Crawford was Hannibal Lecter’s mistress,” as Garland described it) and MAC senior makeup artist Claire Mulleady was being taught how to do what she described as “this new kind of contour” meant to give the illusion of a face full of fillers. In Garland’s kit, however, were not powders or creams but the elastic bands of tights. With the elastic, Garland pulled the model’s cheekbones back and then on the top of the lip, squeezing all the face fat in. “The whole room literally gasped,” Mulleady recalls. If the vainglorious are going through injections, implants and layers of highlighter to mimic youth, how extreme is it to be physically pulling back the face?

The runways have so often been ahead of the curve and the beauty looks tell a story along with the fashion. The clothes are directional, and the beauty look is a meditative, even existential process. The women of the ‘80s, for instance, donned shoulder pads as they charged up to break glass ceilings of the time. Yet it was in painting their lips a bold dark hue that they recollected themselves when the going got tough, retouching their lipstick as though to say before opening their mouths, “Listen to me.”

The 2010s came like science fiction. With a device perpetually connected to your consciousness and — especially for those who came of age at a time when immediate gratification is the new normal — on social media where you develop various personae, like avatars. Here, the face presented is a result of an aggregate of techniques made for the flashbulbs and paparazzi lenses of the red carpet and making mainstream backstage secrets, from drag queens (baking and stenciled brows) to theater makeup (extreme contouring) — it all makes sense for those who want to be seen and “liked,” even if it’s just through the square of a selfie.

“It’s just so generic, stenciled brows, it’s about conforming to a specific look. In fashion, there’s a backlash against social media makeup,” Mulleady reports on efforts first seen in last season’s shows, notably in the “kontouring” commentary look at Hood by Air (for this season, it was about slit eyebrows as an homage to the modern-day gangs of New York).

But what about the more pressing issues concerning one’s appearance, such as the recent crimes that result from racial profiling? If the runways are indeed fulfilling such prophecies, the representation of “individuality by going back to tribes and subcultures,” as Mulleady says, may be off to a rough start that has people calling out appropriation. But maybe this revolution toward one world will not be in vain.

The MAC team worked on 64 autumn/winter runway shows and Mulleady says it’s been the most liberating yet. Designers asked for DIY looks that “made you see who the girl is through the makeup, who she is, what she likes to do,” and the results were never uniform. At the Giambattista Valli show where the girls had a straight line of silver drawn precisely around or over the eyes, some girls came out looking ethereal while others resembled modern-day space-age warriors.

I suggest it’s very ‘90s, and Mulleady agrees. Her love of makeup first came in the form of black eye pencil — tendered by a (pre-Courtney Love) Kurt Cobain poster. The teenage Mulleady would smudge it on with her own fingers to cop that morning-after look, much to her mother and teachers’ chagrin. During the ‘90s, I wasn’t even a teen but was already of the other camp. I wore a different shade of pink lip gloss daily and brushed my hair 100 times before bed. This season is no different. “There is a split trend of two camps of makeup. One is for strict precision, the other is about going for it, no holding back on color or embellishment.”

Like the past season, all looks are anchored on the illusion of bare skin and brushed-up brows — even if they are covered with vermillion powder pigment, dropped onto the model’s face while she’s lying on a bench backstage (as seen at Vandevorst) or precisely dotted with glitter in a Ziggy Stardust redux (like at Holly Fulton).

That being said, Mulleady, who has worked her way up from MAC’s shop floors and saw how different the runway-to-reality expectations of makeup can be, clarifies that Instagram makeup isn’t exactly a bad thing. “A lot of it is really skilled work,” she comments, particularly the imperfection coverage tutorials, “but for everyday life, what they show on the videos is too much product.”

But I can see why there are still those who refuse to pull away from the coverage and the transformations even if it means layering and buffing out the face you are born with — but to each his/her own. The way we present ourselves is our business, but to be melting throughout the day to express ourselves is unnecessary.

“Foundation and contouring powders and creams add coverage where there’s already color (our skin tones and its shadows) which is why it looks heavy,” she explains. Mulleady suggests shifting to products with a real sheerness to it such as MAC’s QuickTrik Stick, a double-ended highlight and contour stick used on basically ever look this season. “It doesn’t have coverage so you are only adding depth of color, not changing or masking to accentuate the features.” I chime in for sheer color-correcting formulas that cancel out tones you want to cover instead of adding more product.

As for her favorite trend of the season, Mulleady backs the Razor eyeliner trend, distilling all makeup trends into the simplicity of just a few lines. I comment that might be harder to adapt in Southeast Asia, the land of predominantly smaller, hooded, sometimes mono-lidded eyes, where eyeliner is worn with the clear purpose of looking prettier.

She gives it a push because, after all, there shouldn’t be only one way to be pretty. “It has nothing to do with a specific shape. It’s going for something DIY, something that you feel in yourself is tougher and cooler. It’s making it more about the attitude,” she says, hopefully where society (or at least the online makeup community) is going, where it chooses to think for itself. “It’s cool because you are not copying anybody, no tutorials. You are just doing you.”