If you’re seeking something to spark your beauty imagination ahead of Halloween weekend, look no further than time-travel psychological thriller Last Night in Soho. The film, which hits theaters today, stars Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise, a new-to-London fashion student whose daydreams are dominated by the Swinging Sixties—an era she’s eventually transported to as her vivid dreams (and, erm, paranormal abilities) find her entering the body of Anya Taylor-Joy’s Sandie, a rising cabaret singer and fixture on the West End scene. Throughout the twists and turns of the film, the dark side of Swinging London’s past is revealed like a fluorescent fever dream, with dark and dazzling hair and makeup that evokes mod nostalgia and something a little more sinister all at once.
“We knew it had to be classy with an edge to keep the suspense,” explains head makeup and hair designer Lizzie Yianni-Georgiou of her vision for the film’s beauty, which she conceived in collaboration with director Edgar Wright and costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux. In nodding to the Youthquake movement, Georgiou zeroed in on how British fashion designer Mary Quant and London boutique Biba transformed style, while also acknowledging the French scene of that era and, of course, its unofficial face, Brigitte Bardot.
“Bardot’s makeup was fresh and pushed boundaries in its time and I wanted to capture that,” explains Georgiou, who drew on on Sandie’s exaggerated wings with Illamasqua s Precision Ink eyeliner and coated lashes in Charlotte Tilbury’s Legendary Lashes mascara, occasionally stacking on false lashes to create a doe-eyed Twiggy look for the singer’s performance scenes.
Finishing out the look is Sandie’s platinum blonde bouffant, a porcelain complexion enhanced with Chantecaille Future Skin foundation, and a dash of Tilbury’s Hollywood Lips in matte pink Dolly Bird. Over the course of the film, the colors and finishes of Sandie’s makeup are used to chart her arc. “The shading and the colors are so integral to the character’s journey,” explains Georgiou. “She starts off with beautiful blues in light colors with a sparkle and a gorgeous rose lip, all clean, fresh, and full of hope, then gets darker into the mauve colors of the Biba vintage palette I had. The darker lip colors show her journey into the seedier side of ’60s Soho and a more broken spirit.”
In contrast, there’s the modern (and latter-day) character of Eloise, played by Mckenzie. “Her character’s journey shows a fresh young hopeful with a nod to Breakfast at Tiffany s to start,” says Georgiou, who enhanced Mckenzie’s natural complexion with YSL Beauty’s Touche Éclat All-In-One Glow tinted moisturizer, soft washings of earthy color from a Bobbi Brown eyeshadow palette, and rimmings of dark Dessin du Regard eye pencil.
But while her bright-eyed beginnings are worth channeling for every day, amid spooky season, it s all about her character’s scene-stealing Halloween night look, featuring a paled-out complexion, a smoky, gaze-eclipsing mask of black eye pigment, and a cascade of damp, lived-in waves. According to Georgiou, the makeup riffed on an image of Daryl Hannah from the 1980s (perhaps in costume as Blade Runner’s Pris) that she and Wright found.
“The character goes through a lot on Halloween night, and this had to show in the makeup and hair look,” explains Georgiou, who created the two-toned veil with a Le Maquillage Pro Fard cream palette and achieved the grungy, melted effect by spraying down the makeup so it would run down the cheeks organically. “She’s walked through the pouring rain, and never really gets the chance to pull herself together after that night,” she says. “It helped to show her mental state—that she isn’t really cleaned off and the remains of the night stay with her.”
Whether you want to go glamorously referential, or punkishly dark and alluring, Last Night in Soho is a dark joy ride rife with mood board-worthy beauty looks—just toss on a white vinyl trench coat and go. “It’s always fun to see people emulate the looks from movies that have inspired them for Halloween,” says Georgiou. “Our film has been released just in time for that—hoping to see a few Sandies and Eloises out there!”
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