I’ve been working for Burberry* for the past couple of days, following the behind-the-scenes “journey” of the makeup look for the AW15 show. You’ll notice, if you scan back through previous Fashion Week posts, that it’s the Burberry show that always grabs my attention; I think partly because the brand is so successful at creating a huge buzz around it, but also because the understated and easy-to-wear looks are always very relatable and real. It’s hard to write about some of the crazier beauty looks during the shows because they simply don’t translate well for everyday wear; nobody in the real world is going to stick feathers on their eyelids or draw big red flags on their faces or make their eyebrows disappear. Well a few, maybe, but it’s not ever going to be very mainstream!

And so it’s always a bit of a salve on my eyes, beauty wise, when it gets to Burberry. The makeup looks are usually very natural, modern, undone and the hair is always that perfect kind of scruffy – piecey, a bit ruffled at the roots, but otherwise not too much going on. Easily achieved with a bit of dry shampoo in the roots and a tiny bit of serum or hair oil to break up the ends!

I felt very privileged to be able to see the Burberry AW15 makeup look in action mere minutes after it had been finalised; on Sunday afternoon Burberry’s makeup artist and designer, Wendy Rowe, talked through the look and demonstrated it on the very gorgeous model Amber Anderson. The focus was on the eyes – a sexy, smouldering but wearable smokey eye that concentrated on defining the lashlines and not piling shadow onto the lids. Wendy had loads of really good tips when it comes to smokey eyes – the main one being that if you overload the lid with dense, heavy colour, you end up looking as though you have holes in your face. (P*ss-holes in the snow, as my Mum’s friend Jackie always says! Excuse the profanity.) If you concentrate on really defining the eye, pushing the liner right into the lashline, but keep the lid nice and sheer and light then you get a more wearable look.

Wendy used the new cream shadow from Burberry Beauty, but you’ll see in my video that the product wasn’t available to use yet – she had a kind of pre-release prototype. But she demonstrated the most brilliant trick; mixing matte powder shadow with some of illuminating primer – the Fresh Glow in “Warm Radiance” – to create the same semi-sheer texture. That worked a treat for my vid, though I think that a proper cream formula would have better staying power (my made-up version creased slightly!) and would be more convenient. Watch this space – I’ll update you when the cream shadows are due to launch. Also out later this year, the AW15 nail polish in Cadet Green  – I wear it in the video and Amber also has it on in the photo below…

Very military – if Mr AMR, who is obsessed with army green, wore makeup then this would be his kind of collection! Look at the eye palette:

I digress. Back to the makeup look. To balance out the sultry eye, Wendy kept the skin warm and glowing and finished it off with a nude lip. All very do-able, nothing that’s too much of a shock to the system. I very much enjoyed recreating the look for my video – when it went out yesterday, it was the most exclusive of exclusives – I previewed it two hours before the show had even started, which is quite unheard of, really. As I said before – a true privilege.

You can watch the video below – the look is just so effortless and cool, it’s definitely one to follow. Even if you don’t usually go in for all of these makeup tutorials take a little look, because the smokey eye tips from Wendy are great ones to keep in mind. All of the products used are listed underneath, you can get most of them (apart from cream shadow and lipstick) at Net-a-Porter here. I’d like to say a huge thank you to Burberry for letting me preview the look and to Wendy Rowe for her top tips – Wendy has a brilliant blog here if you want to have a browse: wendyrowe.com