beauty collaboration | Val's Vanity

Beauty, Makeup

Sneak a Peek at Erdem for NARS’s Strange Flowers Collection

Photo courtesy of NARS Cosmetics.

Sure with snow and chilly temperatures in our forecasts, it’s hard to believe that it’s technically spring. But Erdem and NARS already have their sights on summer by shaking up the season with a garden of strange flowers.

I know what you’re thinking — Florals? How Groundbreaking. But for a season synonymous with beach babes and mermaids, wandering through NARS’s garden of delights is more of a dreamy experience thanks to Erdem’s signature dark romance. So you know this isn’t your average flower patch with a barrage of what the brand calls “demure and daring” hues for eyes, lips, and cheeks — all wrapped in . “It was really interesting to explore my aesthetic in collaboration with NARS and see how far we could push different elements through color and product,” Erdem said when the collection made its runway debut. “It was fascinating to develop new pigments and palettes as well as the cosmetics themselves.”

There’s not one but two eye palettes to play with that provides buildable coverage across your lids, including the Fleur Fatale, which comes with softer hues suited for everyday wear, and the Night Garden, which delivers a serious dose of drama for those nights on the town. Fans of the brand’s iconic Multiples will likely fall head over heels for Erdem’s icy, pink-toned take on a highlighting pencil. Plus there’s the addition of fresh products for the brand like blotting papers, which are a must for anyone who battles against serious shine during the warmer months of the years. There’s also the new lip powder palette that allows for makeup mavens test-drive different textures and even customize their own color when paired with the lush array of lipsticks that provide plenty of pigment, no matter how subtle or bold the shade you snap up.

And you won’t have to wait much longer to snatch these fresh floral-inspired finds, as the collection will be available at NARS Boutiques and NARSCosmetics.com starting on April 12th before hitting the shelves of Sephora on the 30th. But keep in mind that only the Voodoo Lily, Wild Flower, and Larskpur lipstick shades will be available there, so you might want to set your shopping alerts for early on the 12th if you’re looking to complete the collection.

Want to get up close and personal with these pretty pieces? Check out the full collection below!

April 9, 2018 by Val

Beauty, Makeup

Erdem and NARS’s Collaboration Redefines “Garden Variety”

Photo via Women’s Wear Daily.

Erdem Maralioglu is bringing his siganture romance from the runway to the beauty counter in its first color collaboration with NARS.

But the London-based designer wasn’t satisfied with simply selecting a few shades from one of his previous collections and calling it a day. Rather, he used the team-up opportunity to explore his aesthetic and develop a sercret garden of fresh pigments and palettes that “push different elements through color and product,” as he explained to Women’s Wear Daily.

“You can tell a story as much with what you’re wearing on your face as what you’re wearing on your body,” Maralioglu told Vogue.

The result is Strange Flowers, a 13-picece capsule collection wrapped in “weird” floral motifs of spiky dahlia and lilys, which made its debut backstage at his Fall 2018 show Monday morning after two years of development. The collaboration really plays up the pout with not only six lipsticks and balms in varying hues of red, plum, and mauve but also a powder lip palette inspired by the saturated pigments used to mattify the models’ mouths at one of his early runway shows. “There was a lot of time spent talking about the idea of using products or textures that you normally would associate with certain parts of the face, in different ways,” he said.

Other standouts of from the upcoming collection include an icy, pink-toned highlighting pencil to add irridesnce to the inner corners of the eye or anywhere else on your face, even when you’re on to the go. Plus there’s a batch of blotting papers, an unexpected but delightful addition that’s a major must-have for those (like me) who battle against serious shine during the spring and summer.

I’m already head over heels for Erdem’s aesthetic thanks to his penchant for contrast and contradiction, which he says he played with for the cosmetic collaboration, but the idea of using darker hues during a season when brights and neons tend to take center stage. Not to mention, I’m dying to get my hands on that lip powder palette — a surprising beauty buy that I have a feeling we’ll see more of as makeup mavens, novice and pro alike, continue to toy with textures on their lips, lids, and anywhere else.

While there’s no word yet on how much it will cost stateside, you can mark your calendars for May 1st when the capsule collection is slated to hit shelves nationwide. In the meatime, you can head over to Vogue.com if you want to get a closer look at the pretty products.

What are you planning to add to cart? Let me know in the comments below!

February 19, 2018 by Val