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Calm down too-tight curls
If you've curled your hair with an iron or rollers and you're looking more Shirley Temple than you'd like, you can tame them in seconds. How? Easy. Simply spritz them with light-hold hairspray (try Ted Gibson Beautiful Hold Hairspray, $24.95), then hit them gently with air from your blow dryer while pulling down on them. It will instantly soften the curl. -- Devin Toth, stylist at the Ted Gibson salon in New York City

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Get naturally flushed-looking cheeks
"You should wear the makeup, the makeup shouldn't wear you," so with that being said, in order to get the most natural-looking blush application, "put blush on first and then concealer or foundation, this way it looks more like [the color] is coming from within the skin." -- Michael Pierce, Hourglass Cosmetics makeup artist

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Get a false lash look using only mascara
You don't have to go through the trouble of applying faux lashes to get a dramatic lash look. Instead, layer different formulas of mascara, starting with a thickening one (try Bobbi Brown Extreme Party Mascara, $24) and finishing with a lengthening one (try YSL Everlong Mascara, $30). And, to minimize clumping, which is likely to happen when you're swiping on multiple coats, always wipe or blot your wand of excess mascara before applying. -- Kim Soane, Bobbi Brown makeup artist

You might think that because models are so stunning, exotic, sexy, what have you, that they don't need much in the way of hair and makeup to look fabulous. Think again.

See the backstage beauty tips that work in real life.

While covering the shows at New York Fashion Week, we saw first hand what it takes to get naturally gorgeous, freakishly thin and tall models runway ready. It's truly no small feat. They, like us "real" women, have dark circles, split ends, chapped lips, dull complexions, etc., etc. It's true. Fashion Week is like boot camp for models -- it's physically challenging. Their skin and hair is put through rigorous heat styling and backcombing and their poor faces have had makeup applied and scrubbed off multiple times in a day. This training leaves them looking more like we do every day (just being honest here).

That's why the artists working in the trenches backstage have such very important jobs to do. In mere minutes (yes, on occasion they literally have five to 10 minutes to get a model completely ready) they turn these girls into the glamazons we know them to be. And they do it by using the beauty tips they've picked up over the years. The go-to secrets that have worked for them over and over again on red carpets, at photo shoots and, obviously, while backstage.

They were nice enough to share some of these secrets with us. Seriously, they had to style hair or apply makeup -- under serious time pressure -- while we hovered over them, notebooks in hand. Thank you beautiful, talented artists!

So without further ado, here are the backstage beauty tips we learned that work in real life and on "real" women.
BY KRISTEN OLDHAM GIORDANI | SHARES
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