This Unexpectedly Brilliant Black Shadow Is the Marni Woman’s Secret Weapon

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A “cerebral eroticism” sizzled through designer Francesco Risso’s latest for Marni, a celebration of his eclectic, individual woman. That left makeup artist Dick Page with the mammoth task of delivering 41 different looks tailored to each distinct face in today’s show. One hour before the first girl rounded the set’s installation of black speaker boxes, Page moved apace, putting the finishing touches on girl after girl after girl—this one needed a dab of mauve paint, the next received a glossy black lip. “Many, many looks,” he murmured, brushing a bit of green shadow across model Heejung Park’s lids. “There’s dark lips and natural lips, there’s green-gray combos on the eyes, some mauves, some blocks of gray, some dashes . . . all sorts!”

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Across the room, hairstylist Duffy paced the rows, directing his own ode to brilliantly offbeat hair: graphic bowl cuts, a mullet or two, plus many sets of deliberately frizzy, back-combed baby bangs. Yet despite the diversity on display, the playful eccentricity unique to Risso guided their hands—and in Page’s case, resulted in one awfully clever discovery. Those impossibly dark lids were painted not with powdered shadow or cream, but with a bit of gel from MAC’s concealer and color-corrector palette. “I like the tone for an eye, this greasy, glossy, shiny black eye,” he said, adding that he used the same pigment on models’ lips, mixed with MAC’s eye pencil in Feline. “Everything’s a little bit of a mash-up, like that rummage sale kind of idea.” Unconventional, and utterly Marni.