Experimental beauty looks took over the catwalk in Paris to close out fashion week’s FW24 season. This included everything from Loewe’s futuristic bowl cuts to the under eye powder at Vivienne Westwood. Starface’s zit stickers hit the runway again at Kiko Kostadinov, while Schiaparelli joined hair and fashion with braided weave neckties to match bleached brows.
Below, find our favorite beauty moments from Paris Fashion Week’s FW24 season.
Loewe
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At Loewe, hair stylist Guido Palau referenced the boyish futurism depicted in Japanese manga. He turned wigs into cartoonish bowl-cuts dyed flame red, lagoon blue, and avatar green, thanks to colorist Antonia Cometa. A very ordinary braid– which reminded us of a rat tail– tamed the experimental look, set with Palau’s new Zara hair spray which launched just days after the collection.
On makeup, the legendary Pat McGrath envisioned models as hyper realistic portraits– like the 18 idyllic Albert York paintings that hung on the maze-like catwalk walls. Just as the collection was a study on provenance, the makeup was a study on the natural face of every person in the show. To do this, McGrath starred her Sublime Perfection System– which includes primer, foundation and setting powder– before pinching Divine Blush and Skin Fetish: Highlighter + Balm Duo to create a refined, eccentric beauty look.
Vivienne Westwood
You couldn’t miss Vivienne Westwood.
Makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench used “a sweep of powdered white to lift the eyes and narrow the gaze,” she wrote on Instagram. She also brushed on MAC Cosmetics powder to intensely lighten the under eyes. Brows were grown out and feathered in a detour from the popular pencil-thin look, while a q-tip was used to wipe off excess gloss from the lips. Passing on to the hair, Sam McKnight then took the look from “grunge to glamour” using the Dyson Supersonic PRO hair dryer. He turned models into characters with bouffant, tornado-curled ponytails tied with a black ribbon. With Mei Kawajiri on nails, the late renaissance collection wasn’t complete without “a random chopped shape French tip on the natural nail,” she says on Instagram. Painted light blue, iridescent and black, Kawajiri half-covered the top of the nail “just like a nail hat.”
Kiko Kostadinov
As seen at Collina Strada and Luar’s NYFW shows, zit sticker brand Starface had their first European catwalk appearance for Kiko Kostadinov in Paris. Makeup artist Siddhartha Simone shaded on soft grey eye washes– which went with the unreleased neutral-taupe Starface ‘Earth Star’– to play into a snake-like texture. The stickers were layered, clustering into the eye contours.
For Kiko Kostadinov, “softness counter balances bold and opaque fabrications,” according to the show notes, with opacity presented in the hair through crimped, whispy bang extensions by hair stylist Olivier Schawalder. Cascading over the makeup, the hair look had a paper weight feel, while others wore textured eyelash caps which alluded to headdresses, coating their hair like a mullet wig.
Comme des Garçons
With a collection titled “Anger,” the emotion showed in the beauty looks as hair wizard Julien d’Ys brought together braids, beehives, and pompadour hair styles. The looks were a near opposite of last season, where Kawakubo attempted to “break free of the gloomy present,” she wrote, hoping to present a “bright and light future.” On the contrary, this AW24 show which presented matted red and black wigs while models stomped their feet in frustration.
Schiaparelli
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Hair has been an accessory for the AW24 season– remember the hair bow earrings at Simone Rocha for Jean Paul Gaultier couture?–blurring the lines between beauty and fashion. At Schiaparelli, weave was braided into ties. In a similar platinum blonde tone to the necktie ponytail, hair maven Guido Palau went for a statement bleached brow beneath a more classic slicked and middle-parted hairstyle. As for makeup, Pat McGrath featured her backstage essential: the Skin Fetish Highlighter + Balm Duo in the colors Bronze and Nude, tapping the product into the high points of the face.
A more subdued look than at couture week, the beauty looks returned Schiaparelli to realism, giving us looks we’d actually wear. “It’s more about adding a layer of legitimacy to the way people think about the house,” designer, Daniel Roseberry tells Vogue. “So that when you think of Schiaparelli you don’t just think of celebrities, you don’t just think of couture, [but] everyday pieces that you could be wearing right now.”
