The Haunting - Spring Summer 2011 on the Catwalks

 Looking at the Spring Summer 2011 collections, it has become apparent that the bold faces and innovative suggestions made by make up artists have taken a back seat this season.  With just a few notable exceptions, my impression so far is that the face has disappeared!  Facial features have been downplayed, bleached or removed, particularly eyebrows and eyelashes and lips.  If ever there was a season where the styled construction of the models has been accused of being deathly, this is it.

At Caroline Herrera, the pale palour of the models faces, contrasted with the red eyeshadow on the upper lids, presented the body as sickening, harking back to the romanticism of consumptive appearance caused by TB in the of the 19th century.    

"The central metaphor of consumption in the 19^th century was the idea that the phthisic body is consumed from within by its passions. Spes phthisica (spes - hope + phthisis - consumption) was a condition believed to be peculiar to consumptives in which physical wasting led to a sense of well-being and happiness, an euphoric blossoming of passionate and creative aspects of the soul. While the body expired from phthisis, the prosaic human became poetic and the creative soul could be released from the fevered combustion of the body. The paleness and wasting, the haunted appearance, the burning sunken eyes, the perspiring skin - all hallmarks of the disease - came to represent feminine beauty, romantic passion, and fevered sexuality (Morens 2002)." 

Clearly the make up artists at Dsquared² repeated this form of presentation, despite the energised
posturing of the models as they leapt on to the catwalk.  If in the 19^th century, it seemed as if everyone was slowly dying of consumption, and the disease became to be viewed in popular terms, first as romantic redemption, and later as a reflection of societal ills, then it appears that current make up artists have picked up on this identification with romance and have made a decision to use the backdrop of the clothes to repeat this postulation.

Caroline Herrera as seen on Style.Com

 Dsquared² as seen on Style.Com