Back in May 2021, Machine Gun Kelly turned up to the Billboard Music Awards with his tongue dyed pitch black. Had the rapper just kicked off the next new trend, beauty press around the internet breathlessly wondered? But no, it seemed that not many people were keen on staining their tongues with a still unidentified substance and the speculation faded away as we all moved on to the next thing.
Until now. At his AW23 show in London this weekend, designer Chet Lo sent models down the catwalk with tongues dyed vivid shades of red, green and blue. The look took inspiration from bioluminescence – the light produced by living organisms used to lure prey, attack predators and attract mates – the central theme and title of the collection. But it wasn’t just the models who sported the colourful appendage. As he took to the runway at the end of the presentation, Lo showed off his own tongue, dyed bright blue, as well as his teeth which were stained in the same toxic hue.
The look came courtesy of Isamaya Ffrench, who headed up the make-up for the show. Alongside the tongues, models were given wispy clumped lashes and purple iridescent eyeshadow from Ffrench's namesake range. On hair, was Anna Cofone who created sculptural up-dos that looped up and around unencumbered by gravity.
Chet Lo wasn’t the only designer who had fun with beauty this season. Blue eyeshadow dominated the runway thanks to Connor Ives and Dilara Fındıkoğlu, while Simone Rocha showed an abundance of ribbons and Mowalola gave us fairy light faces. Here are our top faves.
For her collection this season, Simone Rocha looked to the Irish harvest festival of Lughnasadh as inspiration. The result was bounteous silhouettes and puffed-out dresses stuffed with real hay and macramé straw. When it came to the beauty, it was all about red ribbons which adorned the hair, clothes and even eyes of the models, which represented the blood that was traditionally painted on children’s faces to ward off bad spirits.
Thomas de Kluyver kept the make-up youthful and naive, while Cyndia Harvey on hair created curled braids and ringlets which covered the eyes of the models. “We brought the hair forward onto the face, with one eye peeking through a few curls that felt weather-beaten and slightly destroyed, and braids that came forward onto the face, again with curled ends,” she told Vogue.
The long-time favourite of heroines in cult movies, blue eyeshadow has been making a comeback over the last few months and LFW cemented this return. At shows like Connor Ives and Dilara Fındıkoğlu models walked the runway with pale blue eye looks courtesy of Lucy Bridge and Ana Takahashi respectively.
Blue eyeshadow at Connor Ives and Dilara Fındıkoğlu AW23Photography Christina Fragkou
Di Petsa
The breaking, healing and rebirth of the self was the theme of Di Petsa’s AW23 collection which looked to Persephone and mythology for inspiration. Models walked the runway in wet-look gowns and leather corseted dresses, some burning sage, some pregnant.
When it came to the beauty, Crystabel Riley used her signature natural materials on the face to create make-up that looked like the models had come from the sea and had salt crystallising on their skin. Wet, slicked hair by Efi Davies was long and flowing or slicked into finger waves added to that illusion and emphasised the fluids motif that is so central to Dimitra Petsa’s work.
Dark and twisted were the words to describe the collection at Mowalola this season, which seemed to take inspiration from an end-of-days New York City, churned through a meat grinder of doomsday anxieties. The beauty looks added to this effect; courtesy of Isamaya Ffrench, faces were completely covered by fake freckles using Isamaya Beauty and combined with fairy lights creating a dark futurism aesthetic while the hair by Claire Moore was kept loose and natural.
