London Fashion Week Spring 2013 backstage beauty: Magenta lips, inky eyes and more from our top 5 makeup looks

All eyes are on Milan now, but let’s not forget some of London Fashion Week Spring 2013’s best in beauty. Most refreshing was the influx of bright lips, an area of the face that didn’t get a lot of play at New York Fashion Week, where the general trend was minimal makeup and manicures—nude polish dominated as did completely bare, buffed-to-shine nails. In fact, backstage in the Big Apple makeup artists often skipped putting pigment on the mouth entirely opting for clear gloss. (One of a few notable exceptions, the matte raspberry lip at Jason Wu was awesome.) When they did pull out the colour, they applied it to the top half of the face: take Dick Page’s green and blue over-the-eye arches at Michael Kors, and Tom Pecheux’s abstract smears on lids at Peter Som. But, where New York left us wanting for bold, colourful lips, London made up for it in spades. Even bare-face-loving Burberry Prorsum busted out the rouge lipstick, hopefully a sign that lips won’t be silenced from here on out.

See our top 5 makeup looks from London Fashion Week Spring 2013 »