How to experiment with coloured eyeshadow, as seen on the beauty pages of Wallpaper* in 2023

Wearing coloured eyeshadow can be a daunting prospect. But the only way to overcome any fear is to feel it, and do it anyway – and particularly when it comes down to make-up application, which is supposed to be a fun and freeing experience by nature.

Experimentation and practice here are key: approaching your face like a painter would a canvas, and testing out shades to see which suits your undertones are essential to the process of learning to pull off a bright and bold eye look. This can extend as far as layering lipsticks or smearing lip gloss onto eyelids, wetting a powder shadow to create a deeper and more vibrant finish to the product, blending eye tints to create a custom hue, or using opposite ends of the colour spectrum simultaneously on eyes and lips.

On the beauty pages of Wallpaper* 2023, this is the philosophy that was employed by three make-up artists: Peter Philips, creative and image director of Dior’s make-up line; Chanel’s UK beauty ambassador Marco Antonio; and the talents of Parisian make-up maestro Caroline Fenouil. Here, three looks to use as inspiration for your own daring makeup application, taking coloured eyeshadow into 2024 and beyond.

How to experiment with coloured eyeshadow, as seen in Wallpaper* 2023

Red

Marco Antonio went big on red for this look for the November 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, combining a glossy lip and dewy skin with a metallic garnet eye. The make-up artist made sure the base was fresh, letting freckles show through, so as not to overdo the final result. He also used Chanel’s Baume Essentiel glow stick in Transparent to highlight under the brow bone and high points of the face, before lining the eyes with a metallic red and brushing it up onto the lashes. Antonio combined Chanel’s 31 Le Rouge lipsticks in the shades Rouge Coromandel combined with the wetter-looking finish of the Rouge Beige colourway. For staying powder, always prime your eyelids and set the liner using a powder, unless you want to create an intentionally grungy, lived-in result that creases and shifts over time.

Blue

Dior make-up’s creative and image director Peter Philips launched an eye palette this year in the shade ‘Denim’, which includes azure, peacock, turquoise blue shimmer shadows And it’s this this is palette that was used here for this shoot with Charles Negre, published in the October 2023 issue of Wallpaper*. Slightly retro in feel, but neither pastiche or referential, this eye look works with the palette to blend and merge colours together, seamlessly diffusing the shadows to the outer peripheries of the brow bone and underneath the lower lid. Ground your look with smokey black liner and mascara: the products here include Diorshow Iconic Overcurl mascara in 090 and Diorshow On Stage Crayon eyeliner in 099.

Green

The look that Caroline Fenuil put together for this beauty editorial (published in the December 2023 issue of Wallpaper*) is not for the faint of heart. It celebrates the ‘strangeness’ of Dries Van Noten’s beauty range, as described by Van Noten himself. ‘I am a storyteller,’ he told Mary Cleary upon the launch of his make-up and fragrance line in 2022. My clothes make you feel certain associations and connections, because I work with all those contrasts, all those opposites.’ Fenuil cleverly played with this idea by teaming the brand’s Satin lipstick in Favorite Red with a metallic, slime-green eyeshadow, blended right up and outward, to create a contrasting and beautifully jarring make-up look befitting of Antwerpian design sensibilities.