Gareth Pugh Plus MAC Equal Lethal Weapon!

Fashion writer Cheryl Wischhover lets us in on British designer Gareth Pugh's latest business endeavors...

"MAC is teasing us mercilessly about the brand’s impending collaboration with Brit designer Gareth Pugh. News leaked a few weeks ago that the designer and MAC, who have worked together on runway shows since the beginning of the designer’s career, are doing a limited edition makeup collection which will hit counters in November.

MAC hosted a party last night to fete Gareth and the collab, and left us wanting to know much, much more–which we suppose is the whole point. This collection is going to be major, whether you’re a makeup nerd or not.

We spoke to Gareth and John Demsey (group president for the Estee Lauder companies) to try to pry some details out of them. MAC approached Gareth to do a collection after many seasons of successful runway shows and an installation at Milk Studios. “If I was going to do something with MAC I wanted it to be something special, and quite specific,” Gareth told us. “The collection is very all-encompassing and versatile. It has the scope to go to the extreme with it. You can really play around with it. I’d rather people do that than copy what we’ve done for the ad images,” he said. He also acknowledged that his own experience with wearing makeup helped him decide what he wanted to do with the collection.

Gareth then showed us an example of how you can achieve subtle vs. extreme with the collection. He was wearing nail varnish from the collection (which we were forbidden to photograph, much to our chagrin). It’s an iridescent shade that looks green or purple, depending how the light hits it. He had layered it over black for a very dramatic and beetle shell-esque look. It was magnificent, and we can’t wait to try it.

The packaging is also going to be different from anything MAC has done. Gareth said, “It’s very heavy. It’s kind of like a weapon. It’s very different to MAC packaging. It’s obviously still MAC, but it’s me and MAC.” John told us, “It’s very luxe, futuristic, and architectural,” which makes perfect sense, given the designer’s aesthetic. (The price puts the collection into the luxe category, too. John told us that it will be about 20% higher than MAC’s normal prices.)

We can’t wait to see the fruits of this collaboration. Makeup as a weapon is something we can totally get behind."