Countdown to Fashion Week - Hair and Makeup - NYTimes.com By Natalia V. Osipova and Joanna Nikas Countdown to Fashion Week: Final Touches: In the final installment of Countdown to Fashion Week, the designer Marissa Webb chooses hair and makeup to create strong, but accessible looks for her collection. Marissa Webb stood greeting visitors to her studio in the East Village. "I'm a hot mess," she said. But the immaculate makeup, pin-tuck shirt and second-skin leather trousers she wore last week seemed to argue otherwise. The only crack in her composure was the fretful glance she darted now and then in the direction of her makeup artist, Cassandra Garcia of Bobbi Brown. Together they studied Li Ming, who was to model several crimson dresses in the collection Ms. Webb will unveil on Thursday in her runway show, her first. "Maybe her lipstick is a shade too blue," the designer suggested with a show of tact. I don't want it to match her dress exactly. Wordlessly, Ms. Garcia blotted away the offending tint, warming what remained with a hint of orange. Watching her work, Ms. Webb exhaled, soothed for the moment at least. Showtime was only a week away, and the pressure was starting to tell. "I'm trying not to count the days... " she said, too rattled to finish her thought. She was not too distracted, though, to focus on the task at hand: making final adjustments to the soundtrack (a mix of female indie rock bands); the shoes, fierce-looking stilettos of her own design; and the jewelry, raw-looking quartz and onyx pendants and rings by Yael Sonia. Summoning her last reserves of cool, she added: "I'm running around collecting samples. Some of them haven't arrived. In her ad hoc role as art director, she was fixing an eye as well on the models" hair and makeup. "That's what adds the polish to whatever look you're trying to achieve," she said. Well, not polish exactly. "Take the pretty out of it," Ms. Webb was instructing Linh Nguyen, who was fiddling with another model's hair, back-combing it and securing it with corkscrew pins in a deliberately messy updo. As he worked, Ms. Webb approached him. "I'm sorry to touch your art," she said as she passed a hand gingerly over the model's pompadour, knocking it slightly askew. It's just that I like asymmetry. The clothes she would be showing - closefitting dresses, shorts suits, corseted shirts over dirndls - were perfectly proper, she knew. But she was aiming to counter anything like a starchy effect with a hint of recklessness. The mood of the collection, her third, would be "soft rock "n" roll," she said. Meaning there would be no nose rings, shaved heads or flamboyant tattoos. "I don't want the look to be intimidating," she repeated like an incantation throughout the afternoon. I want the woman who sees this look to feel she can do it herself. Well, sure, if she brings to the task Ms. Webb's formidable styling skills. The designer, who is in her 30s, honed her aesthetic, a blend of the ladylike and louche expressed in rich Italian fabrics, tie-neck blouses, leather pants and boy-cut blazers, at J. Crew. A disciple of Jenna Lyons, Ms. Webb worked for the company for 11 years, a period during which the brand reached the apex of its influence, before setting out on her own just over a year ago. Has some of that J. Crew experience filtered into her current designs? Ms. Webb compressed her lips, and after a moment of silence, offered only, "I like to take a very simple silhouette and pump it up." Adding a few brazen touches, that is, like the witchy lace-up stilettos she designs, or a leather cravat, moto jacket or jawbreaker ring. Nor could her silhouette truly be called simple. The intricate seaming and exaggerated contours of the clothes she sells at Barneys New York (from $250 for a T-shirt to about $3,000 for an elaborately structured dress) rival those on certain Paris runways. "When it comes to detail, I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive," she said. I'm positive that annoys a lot of people. But the other day she seemed the only one fazed by her perfectionism, a tendency she appears to curb by affecting an undone look. "My cuffs are never perfectly fastened," she said. I never zip the ankles of my pants exactly the same way. My shirt is never completely tucked in. She was hoping to echo that raffishness in her collection, which could benefit, she thought, from a series of scarcely perceptible tweaks. A casual onlooker might not have noticed Ms. Ming's sharp eyebrows. But they did not escape Ms. Webb. "With her lips so red, they were looking a little intense," she said. We stripped off some of the color. It was almost like bleaching them. Mulling over a choice of rings, she thought about stacking them on the models" fingers, an idea she vetoed in the next breath - "they're just too big." Ms. Ming, meanwhile, slipped on her dress, a drop-waist, multi-zippered affair, and toyed with a few stray tendrils of hair. She was runway-ready, in the mind of Mr. Nguyen at least. "There's a controlled hotness to her," he murmured with a dash of pride. Ms. Webb looked on and beamed.