Valentino Couture Eyeliner Look Is Perfect For Summer

Much has been made of Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s ability to infuse his couture designs with a modern sensibility, frequently employing volume and a color palette that deviates from more traditional conventions to surprise and delight those fortunate enough to attend his presentations (and wear his beautiful clothes). He stretched this particular sartorial muscle again this evening at the Gaggiandre in Venice’s Arsenale, presenting elegant suiting and pieces, many of which were interchangeable, on a cast of men and women in splashes of canary yellow, emerald green, and a heart-stopping fuchsia. Gowns and cocktail dresses infused the color palette with bright pinks, baby blues, and the house’s characteristic red, which sparkled against the night sky over the 16th-century shipyard. A single gown required 680 hours of meticulous craftsmanship; yet a sense of luxe simplicity prevailed, from the all-white dress code for attendees to makeup artist Pat McGrath’s color-coded eyeliner—pencils topped with pigment-dipped brush strokes—that reinterpreted more familiar cat-eye flicks in shades of acid pink, lime green, and a “divine purple” to achieve what McGrath described as “a new coda.”

Guido Palau’s tidy braids and razor-sharp center portions were inspired by the same idea. “Sometimes women struggle to wear hair like this, which is so extreme in its simplicity,” he observed of the extension-wrapped ponytails and deliberate behind-the-ear tucks his team perfected with Oribe’s styling cream to create a natural shine regardless of the model’s gender (“couture is for everyone,” Palau insisted). Tight plaits had a similar smooth look when treated with Pattern Beauty’s style lotion. “In a strange sense, the guys took a little longer to find the correct nuance,” Palau added, emphasizing how fluidity on the runway—and particularly backstage—is a mirror of how pervasive beauty has become in our culture. “I believe designers are motivated by how much guys care about their appearance these days, and it’s freeing for men to genuinely care.” Finally, Palau implies, we all desire the same thing: luscious hair.