Note: This is a very picture-heavy post

Day 6 was such an exciting one for me. It started off with lunch with some of my Melbourne beauty blogger mates (Norlin, Emma, Emily and Ling) for a quick catch-up before we headed to the Marie Claire & L’Oreal Paris Beauty Workshop at Maia, which was conducted by Rae Morris. I’ve been looking forward to this event all week. Having backstage access for a few days and trying to pick Rae’s brains on makeup tips in a confined space, it was very refreshing to be able to just sit back, relax and take all her beauty pearls of wisdom in.

It was a good hour of learning more about makeup from the master. It’s not a beginner’s class in makeup. The point of the class is that you already do wear makeup but want to pick up more tips and tricks e.g. choosing the right concealer for your skin colour, the best areas of your cheeks to apply blush and contour, how to fill in your brows to have the best impact, etc.

Where your contouring should start – from the ears

Check out Rae’s heels!

Most of what’s been mentioned in the beauty workshop were mentioned backstage, which means you would have seen it in the Day 3 and Day 4 recap posts. 🙂 But here are a few more tips that I managed to pick up:

• If you could do one thing to your skin to look younger, even out your skin tone. Use foundation or BB cream. When you have even skin tone, it immediately takes the years off you.
• When applying foundation, don’t forget your chest area and shoulders (especially if you intend to wear off-shoulder tops/dresses). It looks weird if your face is 10 shades lighter than your chest and shoulders. If you tan your skin, make sure your face shade matches your body too. Choose a darker foundation.
• When it comes to concealing, do it AFTER foundation because your foundation would have done most of the job anyway.
• Navy eyes are very on trend this season. Two colours that are warm and cool at the same time are navy and burgundy. These are beautiful jewel tones.
• Wear complementing colours to your eyes BELOW your eyes to make it pop. Then add whatever colour you like on your lids.

• For droopy eyes, don’t line your lower lash line only 1/3 of the way (something we’ve always been taught to do) because it stops at the lowest point of your eyes. This emphasises the droopiness.
• Eyebrows protrude when we grow older. So highlighting below the brow bone won’t work because again, it emphasises the lines.
• If you want your eyebrows to hold, spray a mascara spoolie with some hairspray and comb through the brows.
• Lipsticks are meant to go on clean skin. Before putting lipstick on, remove lip balm because it stops lipstick from adhering to the lips.
• Drink enough water till your lips don’t require lip balm. It’s not just the standard 8 glasses a day. You may not even need that much water daily. Your lips are an indication of how you know if you’re sufficiently hydrated or not.
• Mahogany or burgundy lips make your teeth look whiter!
• The perfect nude lip colour for you is in between the colour of your lips and the colour of your skin tone.

Great tips, Rae!

The runway shows on Day 6 were not L’Oreal Paris ones but they were just as good, if not better. The first one of the day was the Sportsgirl National Graduate Showcase. I was excited to see this one because it wasn’t a runway show by renowned Australian designers but collections by university graduates. Out of 75 submissions, 12 were chosen to have their pieces shown on runway.

Nixi Killick

Natasha Fagg

Monique White

The graduates featured were from three universities. From Queensland University of Technology, we had Hayley Elsaesser, Koren Wheatley and Monique White. From RMIT University, we had Bernadette Francis, Cesar Chehade, Jack Hancock, Kara Liu, Natasha Fagg and Nixi Killick. Last but not least, we had Courtney Holk, Karen Yan and Kathleen Choo from University of Technology Sydney.

Koren Wheatley

Bernadette Francis

Cesar Chehade

Before each collection went down the runway, each graduate designer introduced the pieces and the inspiration behind each collection. You can see the enthusiasm, tenacity, pride and incredible amount of hard work that went into each piece.

Kathleen Choo

Karen Yang

Kara Liu

Granted, some of the pieces were pretty out there and looked like they belonged more on the runway than off, but there’s no doubt about how good every piece was. I was very impressed and most of the pieces knocked my socks off.

Jack Hancock

Hayley Elsaesser

Courtney Holm

The final runway show of the evening was the Red Carpet Runway and oh, this was lovely. I think it probably spoke more to the women than the men present because it was all about weddings! The designers featured were Collette Dinnigan, Akira, Rachel Gilbert, Aurelio Costarella, Gwendolynne, Harrolds and Maticevski. I think there were a few teary eyes when wedding gown after wedding gown were shown on the runway.

Aurelio Costarella

Akira

Rachel Gilbert

Maticevski

Gwendolynne

Collette Dinnigan

The Red Carpet Runway didn’t run like the other runway shows during the week. We had live music playing the entire runway show, which was fantastic. The disco ball was spinning and as each model walked out in bridal gowns, you could hear gasps from women here and there. For me, my favourite would definitely be from Collette Dinnigan, Rachel Gilbert and Gwendolynne.

The pièce de résistance of the show was the finale when the final model walked out with three “grooms”. Her train was almost as long as the entire runway! This was when the women gasped the loudest. I know I did. 😛

Oh,what a finale it was. It ended day 6 perfectly. I can’t believe there’s only one more day of the LMFF week to go!

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My Experience of Day 6:

The runway shows on Day 6 were presented by Sportsgirl and Harper’s Bazaar Brides so there was no L’Oreal backstage access for me that day. It didn’t matter because I thought it might be nice to take a bit of a break for one day and enjoy Docklands while I can.

Tim came to Docklands to stay with me for the weekend and we thought we’d make a nice one out of it. He walked with me to Peninsula for the the first runway show and I showed him all the cool clothes, accessories and shoes a lot of women were wearing. His reaction? “Meh. You look better“. Aww bless. I swear I didn’t put him up to it! 😛

The runway shows on day 6 were the best for me so far. It just speaks of so much heart and soul, and I felt incredibly honoured to be able to see the collections of the graduate designers in person. I caught glimpses of a couple of the designers in the crowd and the look of pride and happiness on their faces when all the models walked down the runway during the finale was priceless. It’s funny, but I felt like a proud Mama for them. 🙂

The Red Carpet Runway was stunning. I can never resist wedding gowns and when I saw such beautiful ones on the runway, heck even I choked up. After the show, you can hear women tittering on about how crappy their own gowns were, how they wished theirs were this beautiful, how they wished they could do vow renewals just so they can wear a wedding gown again and have more cake. No? Just me then.

Quick story: right after Tim and I got married, I moved to Melbourne. I still remember taking a stroll along Chapel Street the first month I was in Melbourne. I stepped into a Collette Dinnigan store and when I saw the gorgeous gowns, I really wished I bought one for our wedding instead of the one I rented (which honestly couldn’t even compare to Collette Dinnigan’s).

Hmm … I wonder if 5 years of marriage is long enough to warrant vow renewals next year? I just want to wear the gown again. 😛