At the Teen Choice Awards last night, Katherine Langford took celestial beauty to a new level, wearing a dreamy mix of lilac eyeshadow, smoke-coloured crystals, and stars made of pearls across her eyes.
According to Langford's makeup artist Fiona Stiles, she was looking for something that would contrast with the gothic, black lace Alberta Ferretti dress Langford was wearing that night. Stiles thought first about using dramatic elements like bright colourful eyeshadow, but then these star appliqués kinda found her.
"I wanted something a little more lighthearted with the makeup," Stiles says. "I had gone on a mad hunt looking for a thing all over Los Angeles — and I didn't know exactly what thing I was even looking for! I wanted something special. I finally found some really beautiful 3D pearl stars and a few other things."
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The entire look took less work than you might think. Stiles started with a dusty, slightly iridescent lilac shadow over the whole eyelid. Then she used a metallic, duo-chrome eyeshadow also in lilac, and put lip balm across Langford's lid and inner eye after that to make the colour look wetter and more intense.
For the appliqués, Stiles used smoke-coloured Swarovski crystals in various sizes, because she thought having white crystals would be too harsh a contrast to Langford's lilac eye look and too matchy-matchy with the remarkable pearl stars.
"It’s a nod to Chanel with those pearls," Stiles says. "It felt elevated. It wasn’t teen-y, you know? It was a cool, young look."
To affix the appliqués to Langford's face, Stiles used Duo Eyelash Glue, which she prefers because it stays on forever. It's also a bit rubbery, so it wouldn't hurt to take the appliqués off her face later that night.
But perhaps the most astounding thing about this look is actually how quickly Stiles did it. There's usually just two hours allotted to hair and makeup before a red-carpet event, and she estimates that it only took about five minutes to apply the appliqués to Langford's face.
Stiles has experimented with runway-esque red-carpet makeup quite a few times while working with Langford these past few months, from painting her hands gold for the Met Gala to trying rose gold eyeshadow for Langford's Love, Simon premiere. "It was very collaborative," Stiles says of this celestial look. "This was the Teen Choice Awards, so it’s a good venue to be a little bit playful."