I don’t wash my face in the morning only at night because I have such dry skin. In the winter I use Body Butter from The Body Shop as a moisturizer. Here in Sweden it gets so cold and the Body Butter helps keep everything hydrated so I don’t have any dry skin falling off my face. When it comes to makeup I usually only use mascara and I love Lancôme Hypnôse. I don’t ever wear foundation unless it’s a special night and I want to be extra pretty. I think it looks good in photos but not in reality. But sometimes I do wear blush from bareMinerals.

I dye my hair lighter and then leave L’Oréal Silver Shampoo in. I’ve been going blue/silver for about six months. I want to go even bluer but I don’t have the time to leave the shampoo in for that long. I used to have really dark brown hair but a year and a half ago I tried to go blonder so I had to see the hairdresser for quite a while. It’s really hard to move from dark to light. Now finally I’m light but it took about eight months.

I always did makeup for my relatives when they were getting married; and two years ago my sister, who is a photographer, asked if I could help with the makeup for one of her shoots. I said of course. So I started working with her doing makeup and then other photographers began to contact me. It wasn’t something that I was aiming for but it fell in my lap so now I am also a makeup artist.”

Photos by: Aimee Blaut in Stockholm

Tags: bareMinerals, Blue Hair, L'Oreal, Lancôme, Michaela Myhrberg, Odalisque, Odalisque Magazine, Silver Shampoo, Stockholm, The Body Shop

In 1989 Björn and I were in Paris for the couture shows and I met Kim Robinson who was an Australian running salons in Hong Kong. We had dinner and he invited me to come work with him. I thought about it for a while and eventually called Kim and decided to go. First it was hard but after one year it got a lot better. In Scandinavia you demand respect but in Asia you have to earn your respect so that was a very interesting journey. I worked with a team in Hong Kong for hair and set up my own makeup practice. Eventually I left Le Salon and Kim Robinson and worked a lot with the magazines. I eventually opened my own which I later sold to Elle Hong Kong when I moved back to Sweden.

(some of Maria’s favorite products)

I teach makeup to people and I teach in a different way. A lot of brands have a very scheduled process of how to wash the brushes and do things from light to dark; then I come in and am like ‘okay we are going to break all these rules! Anyone who went to a classic school is going to hate me but people who want to try something else, enjoy the ride!’ I do a lot of patchwork and work mainly with my fingers when I can. I work the best when it’s hands on and I can touch and feel things.

Since I don’t wear much makeup if I want to do something more dramatic I’ll wear red lipstick. So from time to time I throw on a red lip and put on my Tom Ford glasses.”– To see more images and learn about Maria’s daily beauty routine click here to read here.

Photos by: Aimee Blaut in Stockholm

Tags: Björn Axén, Giorgio Armani, Kim Robinson, Lancôme, Le Salon, Makeup.com, MARIA BOSTRÖM, Shu Uemura, Stockholm, Stockholm beauty, Sweden, Tom Ford

“My relationship to beauty and aging is problematic at the moment. I don’t think I’ve ever felt really comfortable in my own body and skin and that colors my view on fashion and beauty a lot. I don’t own my body; I live in my head. Maybe I owned my body when I was ten or eleven but it doesn’t feel like its mine. It is probably the feminine thing that I find annoying. After eleven you become a woman and you get breasts and hips and I never wanted to deal with that at all. I want really straight proportions. I’m not one of those women who say I love women and the female form. If you’re a designer and a feminist you’re supposed to cherish women. I don’t think my clothes are sexist and in that sense they are feminist, they don’t make women into objects. Women who dress for men won’t buy my clothes. Every designer says they are designing for a strong independent woman who knows their style, but that’s really bullshit. The best customer is someone who has no self-esteem, no idea of her own style and lots of money.

I used to use a lot of red lipstick at the end of the eighties and early nineties when the House clubs were big. Back then you couldn’t really wear anything on your face or eyes just bright red lips. You had clear colorless mascara as well. I just started wearing red lipstick again.

In the main line (Atelje) I work with grander themes like porn or God or violence things like that. The Back collection is more of a style than based on different themes every season. I have to start with something that I dislike and then turn it into something that I do like. This collection I worked with work wear which I always found a bit itchy and couldn’t stand and now I cant get enough of it, that’s how it sort of works for me (laughs).. I don’t know any other way.

I had normal people in my shows for many years, and it wasn’t like I was on a crusade or wanted to make normal people feel better, I had no interest in that. It was because I thought it was more beautiful because it was more interesting to me. In the end I realized that people didn’t really see the clothes because they thought it was so strange I had normal people and my strange music. I’ve gotten used to models now, they are a blank canvas and I realize that. 

Sometimes I don’t have any idea at all about the beauty look for my shows, so I talk with the stylist and makeup artist about my inspiration and they sort of give me an idea. I tend to not like a heavily made up face. Its either eyes or lips for me. I don’t like when the makeup and hair take over and distract from the clothes.”

Makeup Artist Ignacio Alonso designed the look with Anne-Sofie for the BACK show. They went for an old fashioned “lady look” working with layers of powder to get a matte finish. The lips were also layered starting with a base of MAC cult lipstick Ruby Woo. To add warmth to the lips they applied orange and red blush along with the MAC Pro Red lip pallet.

Photos by: Aimee Blaut in Stockholm

Tags: Ann-Sofie Back, BACK, Chanel, MAC, Makeup Forever, Ruby Woo, SFW, Stockholm, Stockholm Fashion Week