Sports Calendar

Still not twinkling? Try Le Vernis in Gold Fiction (£17) to give your nails a Midas touch. Or, to get a real glint in your eye, dab a little Yves Saint Laurent Touche d’Or (£24.50) on the inner corners.

Outdoorsy

If you’re planning on frequent autumn rambles with stops to devour blackberries on the way, this season’s outdoorsy glow will come naturally. More urban types can easily fake the softly flushed cheeks and berry-stained mouths that the make-up artist Val Garland created at Aquascutum and Todd Lynn.

Garland suggests you apply a soft blush in the middle of your cheeks, “so the face looks wind-blown”. Try Benefit Posietint (£22.50; 0808 238 0230), a perfect tea-rose shade. For lips, Rouge Dior Replenishing Lipcolor in Fantastic Plum ( £17.50) and Chanel Rouge Hydrabase in the same shade (£17.50) both give the requisite drunk-on-merlot effect, but the secret is in the application. “The lips should look softer and more blurred,” says Garland, who advises sweeping a large brush over the lips after applying lipstick to diffuse the colour.

How to wear tricky autumn and winter trends

The new season has brought a slew of difficult trends. Get them right and you'll be the most fashion-forward girl in the room.

BACKGROUND

• 10 ways to update your wardrobe for winter

• Beauty trends for autumn and winter

• Back to work blues: fashion and beauty tips

Multimedia

• Pictures: winter coats

• Pictures: 15 winter wardrobe essentials

• Pictures: the tricky trends for this season

The fashion trends for autumn and winter

For every trend this season, there is an antidote. Here's where to buy the new looks and how best to wear them

Painterly

“There’s definitely a more painterly feel around this season,” says Mac’s head of make-up artistry, Terry Barber. “We’re moving away from pop-art brights towards Modigliani pastels and clashing colours.”

At Derek Lam, the artistic feel relied on a wash of mustard across eyelids — try Shu Uemura Pressed Eyeshadow in Yellow (£13; 020 7240 7635) — against dark, burgundy lips. At Marni, meanwhile, the sludgy colour palette — pea green and faded yellow on the eyes and a whisper of rust on the lips — evoked Egon Schiele’s paintings. “It was quite pinched, rather than sexy, but incredibly elegant,” says Barber, who advises tapping the eye shadow on with a brush to achieve a stained result.

Invest in a palette of shades that you can mix and match, such as Ben Nye Lumiere Grande Colour Palette (£35 for six colours; 020 7221 8289), and try outlining lips with Nars Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Sierra (£16.50; narscosmetics.co.uk ), then dip a finger in lip balm and smudge the colour towards the centre of the mouth.

Knots

Fashion likes to dictate new erogenous zones each season, and this time round, it has become hard to deny the allure of small hairdos. The best way to achieve the required delicate proportions is with a knotted up-do, as seen at Versace. “Knots can sometimes be seen as spinster-like, but to me, they evoke moneyed Parisian women — as seen in Helmut Newton’s images,” says Guido Palau, the session stylist who created the fierce knotted styles at Prada, Balenciaga and Lanvin.

“You can afford to use more product to create shine because the hair won’t end up looking lank or greasy when it is up,” he says. At Prada, he applied Redken Urban Experiment Enamel Gel (£15; 0800 444880) to dry hair before scraping it back into a ponytail. He then twisted the loose tail until it folded back on itself and could be pinned in a knotted bun using several A pins (45p for a small bag, from South Beach Rocks; hqhair.com). For a seriously PVC finish, try spritzing the finished style with MOP Glisten Spray Gloss (£13; hqhair.com).

ASK US AT LOOK GOOD FEEL BETTER

Style’s beauty team, Edwina Ings-Chambers and Joanna McGarry, will be on hand to solve all your beauty-based dilemmas at Selfridges, W1, on Saturday, September 20. Together with Aveda, we will be offering makeovers, massages and one-to-one consultations for a £20 donation, redeemable against products. Plus, each customer will receive a gift bag worth more than £75. See you there

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