Winter style palette: bright, bold and chic

Say goodbye to summer trends and embrace fun colours, bold brows and berry-stained lips.

Summer is sadly over and it's taking with it the coral lips, acid nails and glowy skin we enjoyed so much for the past three months.

Winter, in comparison, can seem a little dreary and bleak - and who enjoys static-filled hair days, chapped lips and dehydrated skin?

But I always love winter beauty trends.

Chic and sophisticated are words that instantly come to mind when you think of winter beauty - flawless skin, dark lips and smoldering eyes. Here is a round up of the hottest looks from the runways to show you what to do with makeup this winter and more importantly - how to cheat the look!

Wine stained lips

In keeping with our current obsession with vampires, this fall's most popular and most wearable trend is the wine-stained or berry lip color. The bolder amongst us will rock it as a full on lipstick while the shy ones (my hand is raised here, ladies!) will turn to glosses, balms or lip tints to sport a softer version of the trend.

Of course, you'll need to keep everything else absolutely minimal - I'd recommend foundation and mascara only. Definitely no blush! And depending on your colouring, reach for purple-toned berry shades if you're light skinned or red-toned berry shades if you're medium to dark skinned.

Red nails

This one makes my heart sing with joy! For the past few winters, dark berry and wines have been the nail polish shades of choice and while they admittedly look uber-chic, they can get a little bit dull after a while. I'm so glad red is the color of the season - why? Because red is a fun colour, it's an instant mood-lifter, it looks cute and chic at the same time and it goes with anything! OPI's Big Apple Red is my favourite.

Bold brows

Don't you just love how fashion keeps contradicting itself?

This summer was all about bleached, barely there brows and now the bolder, darker, bigger brow is back! Don't go too pencil happy though. I recommend sticking to the natural shape of your brow but just filling in any empty spaces or sparser areas with either a pencil (using a very light hand) or a powder eyeshadow (this gives a more natural look). You can also make brows slightly thicker by simply moving the pencil/angled brush in short upward flicks on the upper end of your brows.

Finally, a few words of advice: when it comes to following trends you must remember two things :

1) less is more

2) be yourself

Follow one trend at a time - if you go out with vampire lips, bold brows and red nails, you will look crazy. Take my word for it. So, take on one trend at a time and wear it well!

Secondly, don't blindly mimic the makeup you see on the runway - runway makeup is meant to be exaggerated, it's worn by models and created by leading international makeup artists. Take the essence of the trend from runway looks and then make it your own. If you can't pull off the trend, that's fine, either tone it down till it works or opt for another trend which suits your face and personality better. You'll look much better if you're genuinely comfortable and happy with your appearance!

Happy Winter 2010!