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Day: 20 October 2014

Halloween style stars from the silver screen

For the more sartorially savvy amongst us, Halloween can be something of a nightmare. Do you forgo your fashion credibility for full on fright, or do you attempt a half-arsed costume that’s less spooky and more sexy? Well with a little help from these scary but stylish silver screen stars, you can have it all this Halloween.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Wednesday Addams
Heroine of goth girls the world over, Wednesday’s chic black pinafore with contrasting white collar is oh so Valentino and has inspired legions of copycats. Topped off with her trademark pigtail plaits, this look is best accessorised with apathy and deep disdain.

 

Photo: Warner Bros Pictures

Beetlejuice
The Beetlejuice stripe has been a fashion mainstay for a few years now. Monochrome plus a sharp suit can only equal style points; well that’s what you’d think… Unfortunately the famous costume reached new horrible heights last year when everybody’s favourite creepy misogynist Robin Thicke wore his version of the iconic black-and-white suit to perform at the VMAs. There are two ways to go: either sample the Beetlejuice stripe in one element of your Halloween outfit for understated appeal, or go full on Thicke. There’s no doubt which one’s more frightening…

 

Photo: Screengrab

Michael Jackson in Thriller
Probably the scariest music video ever made also just happens to feature the most 80s jacket you’ve ever seen. Yes, red and black and super shiny, the outerwear of MJ’s teenwolf character is arguably as famous as his killer dance moves. Rock one of these bad boys on the 31st with caution as your friends will definitely make you do the dance.

 

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

Cruella De Vil
Back in 1996 Cruella’s animal skin obsession made her less of an icon and more of an oddity, however fast forward to 2014 and her monochrome ensembles and supersized fur coats would look at home in the street style circus outside any fashion show.

 

Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

Maleficent
Even before Angelina Jolie’s cut-glass cheekbones came into the picture, Maleficent’s long black cloak and statement collar made her a seriously scary style icon. With Miss Jolie in the mix, however, the Mistress of All Evil’s red lip and smoky eye beauty look is even more desirable.

Monster mash

Halloween: one of the best nights of the year. Everyone makes an effort, everyone gets drunk, and everyone has fun. But what about us poor students who can’t afford an extravagant costume? Fear not, I am here to help. Here are some super easy and quick tips on how to make costumes from everyday items.

 

Bat
To make a bat costume all you need is some dark clothing, bin bags and cardboard. Make cardboard bat ears that can be pinned to your head or attached to a hairband. Cut-out black bin bags can be attached to wrists and shoulders to make bat wings. Cardboard ears can be used to transform yourself into any animal, including the superstitious black cat. You can also stuff a pair of black tights and attach to a belt to make a wonderful tail. This tight trick could also be used to make spiders legs!

Skeleton
Cut bone shapes out of paper and attach them to an all-black outfit with safety pins. This is where your medic friends may come in handy!

Vampire
Bin bags to the rescue again! This item can transform almost any outfit. Again, dark clothes are probably the most fitting for the spooky theme. Simply cut out a cape from the bin bags. Job’s a good’un.

Fake blood
You can make fake blood to stain your clothes and create fake injuries with. This is perfect for zombies or vampires.
You will need: Plain flour, water, red food colouring, 1 tsp of instant coffee. The quantity of ingredients isn’t important, as it depends on how much fake blood you want to make. Boil some water in a pan, then sieve in some flour. Next, add the red food colouring. Finally add the coffee to the hot mixture and stir.

 

These may not be the most original Halloween outfits you will ever wear, but they have got to be some of the cheapest! Accessorize your look with some pale make-up, heavy eye-liner and dark lipstick to achieve the gothic feel. With these handy tips, you don’t need to think about your Halloween outfit until the night!

Gothic fashion will never die

Traditionally the term ‘Goth’ is associated with a specific social group, and this often comes with connotations of music taste, and attitudes towards more intricate issues like cultism. However, since the turn of the century the fashion and beauty industry has seen an explosion of Gothic subculture begin to influence a wider market.

Gothic fashion has inspired us to experiment with black, red, royal purple and other dark palettes by pairing them with captivating fabrics; as well as being pleasing to the eye and touch, these fabrics also add an element of mystery. Velvet, silk and sheer fabrics make seemingly simplistic items of clothing more dynamic. The use of lengths and layers creates more depth to dark ensembles—particularly outfits in all black. Kim Kardashian proved this by wearing a statement Givenchy sheer black lace jumpsuit at their AW14/15 show at Paris Fashion Week.

Photo: Selfridges

In terms of make-up, winged eye-liner is a common aspect of everyday makeup and can be applied more fiercely to transform a look from day to night. Everyone’s favourite—MAC Ruby Woo vamp lipstick—has been substituted for a much darker lip (à la Jessie J), and there has been continued mass production of Urban Decay’s Smoked eye shadow palette.

Although some of us may associate Gothic clothing with Avril Lavigne and an overwhelming increase in black eye pencil sales, simply observing the case of fashionista Lorde will help you to see how underlying Gothic influence has become a huge fashion trend. From high street fashion to Valentino’s studded sling-backs, there’s no doubt that Gothic style is currently influencing the way we dress. It’s the unconscious element of this trend that leads me to believe it won’t vanquish any time soon.

Halloween tutorial: seriously scary skull

To achieve this nightmarish (in the most fashionable sense of the word) look you’ll need the following:

– White and black face-paint

– Black eye-liner

– Black eye-shadow

– Make up sponges

– Fluffy eye-shadow brush

– Setting spray

Send photos of your (hopefully successful) attempts at the skull face to our Twitter at @mancunionfash or tag us on Instagram at @mancunionfashionandbeauty

Photo: Ellie Howe

Step 1:

Apply white face paint all over the face using a makeup sponge (both sold in Afflecks Palace). Draw two black blobs over the eyes using black eyeliner and eye shadow—think morning panda eyes. You can also add black eyeliner into the waterline for a more dramatic effect. Use the eyeliner to draw around the end of the nose, covering the nostrils, and create two points leading up towards the eyes (make sure your eyeliner is sharp enough). Fill this in using eye shadow. Using the eyeliner, draw a thin line leading from both corners of the mouth, keeping it in line with the hollow between the lips.

 

Photo: Ellie Howe

Step 2:

Draw a series of perpendicular lines over the mouth line to replicate teeth until you reach the middle of the jawline (there should be about fourteen lines in total). Draw in the jaw bone using eyeliner; start by tracing around the jaw up to the ear, then sketch the jaw bones, replicating the shapes seen in the accompanying photo. Fill in the gaps between the bone shapes, to create the illusion of a hollow. Make sure that the line from the mouth falls in the middle of the cheek-hollow.

 

Photo: Ellie Howe

Step 3:

To create the illusion of teeth, use the eyeliner to draw a triangular cap over the ‘teeth’ lines, and fill in the gaps between these triangles on the back three ‘teeth’. Use a fluffy eye shadow brush to blend out these lines, creating the illusion of more depth. Use black eye shadow to fill-in the top jaw bone, roughly applying it to the central gaps and blending out using the same fluffy brush. Follow this above the jaw bone, leading up to the temple. Fill in the temple using the same technique.

 

Photo: Ellie Howe

Step 4:

To create contours around the eyes, draw two semi-circular lines around the start of the eyebrow, coming from the eye hollows. Draw similar lines directly underneath the eye hollows (think 9am eye bags) and around the bottom of the hollow, over the cheek bone. Draw another, less precise line either side of the nose, roughly joining the under eye lines, and blend them out, creating a contouring effect around either side of the nose. Set the entire look with a setting spray to finish and voilà! You are now a seriously scary skull.

Fifty shades of beige

My ongoing nine year ‘foundation voyage’ has been a turbulent and complex one, and I have left a countless number of beauty counters either as Peppa Pig’s twisted human doppelganger, or a bizarre hue of biscuit (neither or which, by the way, correspond with my own natural skin tone, I’d say I’m more Hovis multigrain). Year after year I would cake my face with the alien shades at my disposal, and photo after photo I was harshly reminded me that I was trying to be part of an industry that simply didn’t want me there.

Whether I was counting my pennies in Superdrug or making an investment at Selfridges, it seemed that most make-up brands either hadn’t cottoned on to the existence of darker skin, or that they simply didn’t care. Bobbi Brown recently divulged that at the beginning of her career, she had to formulate make-up for her darker skinned models, as their natural shades simply weren’t available. The industry had a ‘one size fits all approach’, the only problem being that ‘all’ was code for ‘Caucasian’ and the sizing system cruel.

Nowadays it would seem that the story is a little different, though there is still a lot of progress to be made. Pioneers of the beauty industry such as Nars and Mac openly celebrate ethnic difference and equality, catering for all skin types and tones. What’s more when black model Jourdan Dunn was chosen as he face of YSL’s touche eclat shades for darker skin, it was a ‘breakthrough’. And interestingly enough, Lancôme actually consulted the US research group Women of Color to develop their new Teint Idole Ultra 24hr foundation, their most inclusive range.

Although I appreciate and recognise products specially formulated for ethnic skin, I can’t help but feel that their existence (particularly that of the tactlessly named ‘Black Up’) equates to pointing the finger at someone and zealously, screaming “you’re different, Chanel wasn’t made for you.” It therefore makes me proud to see that aside from specialist beauty brands such as Flori Roberts and Fashion Fair, iconic and global brands are channelling their energies into catering to the spectrum of skin colours that fall between black and white.

Although these shifts within the beauty world may well reflect changing attitudes towards ethnic difference, it isn’t simply a question of featuring an ‘ethnic’ cover girl or widening the global roster of foundation shades, and dismissing the core issues. It’s important to recognise that the key to revolutionising the beauty industry is not only in representing different groups but in how we represent and perceive them. After all, how often is black women’s skin edited to look brighter and more bronzed in editorials? And isn’t it a little strange that on the rare occasion that Indian models are featured in mainstream fashion magazines, they pertain to the fair-skinned Bollywood ideal of South Asian beauty? Finally and perhaps most importantly (albeit a little crude), why is every ethnic model featured in beauty campaigns sensationalised as ‘breakthrough’, when in reality they are just another exceptionally beautiful human being amongst a troop of other beautiful human beings?

It’s time for all makeup brands to join the beauty revolution until inclusivity becomes the norm. I want brands to disassociate themselves from our culture of ‘tokenship’ and ingrained beauty ideals and lead us to a future where featuring Jourdan Dunn in an ad campaign isn’t considered a front page news and specialist ethnic beauty brands aren’t seen as a saving grace for ‘suffering’ shade seekers.

After all, let’s face it, we all have problems and whether you’re ‘beige’, ‘bronzed’ or ‘biscuit’ should not be one of them.