London Fashion Week raced by in a nanosecond. It feels like only an hour ago that I was stood in the courtyard of Somerset House, gulping back my first free Lavazzo espresso of the week, internally panicking about whether trainers are ‘allowed’ this season and, now it’s all being dismantled and stowed away until February.

Most designers played to beauty type at LFW but were no less beautiful for it – we saw almost celestial glowing skin at Christopher Kane, chola girl beauty at House of Holland (an evolution of his chola ghetto girls of SS10) and of course, the army of insouciant, full-browed girls at Burberry Prorsum. But, if you held a glass to the wall and listened very carefully, you could also hear the distant murmuring of the tides changing.

For one, no one could have predicted the astonishing about-turn of Erdem. He went from Brit fashion house most associated with pretty milkmaid braids and angelic, barely-there make-up (and Sam Cam), to the new voice of melancholic cool with a beauty edict that chopped up gender and put it back together again. L’Oreal Professionnel hair stylist (and the most exciting talent at London Fashion Week), Anthony Turner proclaimed his enmeshed French twists and boyish low side partings as his favourite hair look of the season so far. Public schoolboys, public schoolgirls, ghosts and the Rolling Stones all played a hand in inspiring the tough – yet somber – most wonderfully complex, many-layered beauty design of the week. 

That sense of rowdy, rebellious anarchy was thick in the air (isn’t it always in London?), Mark Fast, who’s beauty signature customarily denotes a high glamour look, unleashed his inner Camden Goth, or rather, Tigi’s Nick Irwin unleashed Mark’s inner Goth with the first appearance of an army of wigs at LFW; shaggy, blacker than the night and a bit Elvira (in a good way).

Wigs can often imply the theatrical, grandiose and fantastical subtext to a particular beauty look (see Meadham Kirchoff’s blonde nun wigs) but at L’Wren Scott’s sit-down breakfast show, the sleek little geisha style black bobs which were styled as if to look they had just been under a downpour, were the picture of solemnity and elegance.

Grunge – the subculture that’s been used and abused as a chief beauty reference for umpteen seasons no - saw itself replaced with ‘gritty’ at Mulberry, as appropriated by the oracle of hair, Sam McKnight. Ok, yes, gritty is hardly a reversal of fortunes for grunge, but it is an evolutionary step forward, characterized by a ‘hardness’ rather than a ‘dirtyness.’

And this was a sentiment that was permeate through the London shows: ‘lived-in’ beauty, it must look, ‘lived-in, slept-in.’ Gucci Westman’s taupe waxy eye at Richard Nicoll, Eugene Souleiman’s slicked back warrior hair at Antonio Berardi and Hannah Murray’s ‘slept on the beach’ burnished beauty at Topshop Unique – all proof if ever there was, that we are undoubtedly in a post-effort age, in which every strand, ponytail or swipe of taupe gloss across the lids must look entirely accidental and inherently part of you.

For all the rabble-rousers, punks and Ibizan party girls, there were was a steady concerto of heartbreakingly beautiful restraint. ‘Raw’ was the decree from Simone Rocha to make-up artist Sam Bryant who created a vision of feint tonal, flattened out pinks on the Mohawked girls (a wondrous James Pecis creation, of course). While, Val Garland created the most luminous gaggle of ‘alien’s at Julian Macdonald, pearlescent visions that appeared to have been preserved in ice for 50 years and released that morning. At Giles, the beauty agenda tends to be as effervescent and masterful as his gowns, only this time, Lucia Pieroni created a complexion so raw as to be ‘see-through.’

All of which neatly ushered in what is surely to become the standout make-up contraption of next season (I lost count of the amount of times I spotted on make-up tables) MAC Spring/Summer14 Palette, which neatly punctuates an inescapable truth: mauve, and everything that lies within that colour palette, will be finding it’s way onto your cheeks, lips and eyes come February. Meadham Kirchoff, Simone Rocha and Burberry pledged their allegiance and when the time is right, I suspect we will too.

And I hate to break it to you, but this really is the season in which you’ll need to get used to going sans-mascara, if you have any desire whatsoever to stay on beauty brief. I promise it’s not as horrific as it sounds; I’ve started early, taking my queue from Gucci Westman at Antonio Berardi, who offset the un-lashed eye with a  ‘designed not diffused’ matte red lip (using Revlon Colorburst Matte Lip Crayons, out in spring) and a gently defined brow. It is an undeniable truth: Victoria’s Secret glamour is dead.

The technique and artistry exhibited by the hair and make-up teams at London’s shows is insurmountable to any other fashion week city. It totally bowls you over. And, depressingly, maintains a safe distance between what can they can do and what we can do with a face. Milan, show us what you’ve got.

Have a look through the gallery above to see the key beauty moments from the London shows.