The new cool-girl way to wear pastel eyeshadow

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia (MBFWA) has kicked off in Sydney and we’re out here, cameras at the ready, waiting to deliver fresh beauty inspo hot off the runway to you, dear readers.

Our first port of call was legendary Aussie designers’ Bec + Bridge’s show, and we need to talk about THIS:

The beauty look for the show was all laidback-surfer-girl with natural-looking skin, beachy waves…nothing too crazy to see here. Except, hold up, THAT eyeshadow.

MAC Senior Global Artist Nicole Thompson described the bright eye look as “a pop pastel. There’s nothing subtle about it. It’s almost like neon pastel.”

“Neon pastel” is a combo of words we never thought we’d want to use to describe anything going on our faces. But you know what? The look is edgy and cool, without taking itself too seriously, and we think it’s a vibe. It’s fun without being OTT thanks to the rest of the look being kept neutral.

To create this incredible eye makeup, a combination of formulas were layered to up the colour intensity.

“It’s all about a combination of cream and powder. So, if you just did eyeshadow, the colour wouldn’t be strong enough. You wouldn’t get intensity behind it, especially this beautiful intensity, it looks so amazing,” says Nicole.

“It’s all about those colours. So what we do is custom mix them with our MAC Paintsticks, and Lipmixes, and they’re kind of true colours. We mixed white with everything and we’ve made these pastels and had a lot of fun here! It’s first thing in the morning, we want them to look really bright.”

If you’re keen to give it a crack yourself, Thompson has kindly given us the DL on how to get the look.

First of all, she says you’ll want to go in with a cream eyeshadow and then layer powder eyeshadow on top.

This is because, “on its own, the cream isn’t special enough; you need the powder to make it look even more special. We pop the powder on top and we’re pressing it on - really, really patting it on with your fingers.”

Then to finish, you’ll want to use a selection of makeup brushes to top up the powder eyeshadow even more, and soften the edges. 

“What we’ve got here is a small brush to put it on, and a fluffier brush to soften. Nice soft edges here – we don’t want it to look too punched on. This is a [MAC] 239S brush and you can really pack it on the inner corners. And then use a nice fluffy brush like this (this is [MAC] 224) to really soften it out. We want it to be really poppy on that inner corner and really pile it on.”

And here’s our favourite piece of advice:

“With powders and creams, don’t be afraid to mix and layer. Because we’re not doing really heavy layers, it’s not going to move around so we’re just doing a light layer of cream, a light layer of powder and what you get it really great staying power,” says Thompson.

Looks like it’s going to be a colourful winter ‘cause we don’t think we can wait until summer to try this on our own faces!

If you’d like to get more of the beauty goss coming out of MBFWA 2019, check out which Australian fashion designer used lipstick as eyeshadow backstage.

What do you think of this pastel eye look? Let us know in the comments.

Main image credit: Getty