See The Best Street Style Looks From Paris Fashion Week

Oh la la! Paris Fashion Week is in full swing. We’ve been busy spotting all of our favourite looks at the shows, on the FROW and, also, on the streets. There’s been street style in abundance this year, and we’ve loved keeping our eyes peeled for all of our favourite looks in between the shows.

Wear it dry, and you’ve got your stan­dard dust­ing of color—classic and pre­dictable (in a good way). But wet! Wear­ing it wet opens a whole new world of oppor­tu­ni­ty. “What you’re doing is bring­ing out the pig­ment­ed nature of the shad­ow,” make­up artist Vin­cent Oquen­do says. “When­ev­er I wet an eye shad­ow, it’s when I real­ly want it to pop—but it real­ly has to be a spe­cial kind of prod­uct to be able to blend after it sets. Because a lot of the times when it sets, you get streak­ing.” Nobody wants that. In order to avoid any wet shad­ow mishaps, fol­low these guidelines:

Prod­uct

First, go with the obvi­ous: any eye shad­ow labeled wet-to-dry. The Nars Dual-Inten­si­ty line is the standout—the sin­gles come in 12 dif­fer­ent shim­mery shades, and there’s a cor­re­spond­ing brush (then there’s the new­ly released Dual Inten­si­ty Blush line, which was all over Fash­ion Week—but that’s a prod­uct for anoth­er post). Burber­ry also makes a few very ver­sa­tile shades specif­i­cal­ly for this in their Wet & Dry Silk Shad­ows. And the tech­nique-spe­cif­ic eye shad­ow cat­e­go­ry isn’t just a ploy to get you to buy more prod­uct. “You can’t just use any eye shad­ow for this,” Vin­cent says. “Cer­tain ones will hard­en up on top and become unus­able because they’re not made for this.”

Baked shad­ows are also fair game—we’re fans of Lau­ra Mercier’s Baked Eye Colour Wet/Dry and Lorac’s Star­ry-Eyed Baked Eye Shad­ow Trio in particular.

For more advanced play­ers, Vin­cent sug­gests mov­ing on to straight pig­ment (MAC or even OCC’s Pure Cos­met­ic Pig­ments). With the added mois­ture, they’ll become eas­i­er to lay­er with oth­er prod­ucts. For a look with more depth, try using a cream shad­ow as a based before swip­ing with a wet pow­der shad­ow. “It’s like insur­ance,” Vin­cent says. “You’re dou­bling your wear­a­bil­i­ty.”

Brush
This all depends on exact­ly what you want to do. “Mind the resis­tance,” Vin­cent says, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing for uni­form col­or across the lid. “I tend to rec­om­mend a blender brush, which is the brush that looks like a feath­er duster. If you do it with a stiff brush, you’re defeat­ing your­self before you even start. The joy of a wet-to-dry is you have to get it right amount of prod­uct loaded up, and then it blends itself. If the brush is too stiff, it will leave the shad­ow streaky and then much hard­er to control.”

How­ev­er, if tightlin­ing or water­lin­ing is in the cards, a much thin­ner brush is required accordingly.

Liq­uid
Do not, repeat, do not put eye drops, water, or any oth­er sort of liq­uid direct­ly on your eye shad­ow. This’ll screw up your prod­uct for lat­er use. “Late­ly, I’ve been wet­ting the brush with the Glossier Sooth­ing Face Mist, but Evian Min­er­al Water Spray is good for sen­si­tive eyes,” Vin­cent says. If the top of your pow­der does get a lit­tle hard­ened by wet appli­ca­tion, there’s a trick to remove it: Get a clean mas­cara spoolie and “exfo­li­ate” your com­pact, Vin­cent rec­om­mends. This won’t crack the com­pact and will make it ready to go once more.

Pho­tographed by Tom Newton.