In case you weren’t able to attend New York Fashion Week this season and are looking for beauty inspiration to add to your mood board, we’ve got you covered. Aside from the exclusive backstage beauty interviews we did before our favorite designers’ shows– such as House of Aama, LaQuan Smith, Sergio Hudson, Luar, and Prabal Gurung– there were, of course, many other standout moments as well.
Consider hair stylist Duffy’s viral ‘60s wigs for Marc Jacobs, which were an ode to mundane wonder. Otherwise, Thom Browne’s poetic closing show included sculptural braids and raven-like makeup. Meanwhile, Willy Chavarria’s show was all about classic Latinx makeup, and finding the intersection between the future and the past.
Below, you’ll discover five shows from New York Fashion Week that had attention-grabbing beauty looks.
Marc Jacobs
On February 2nd, Marc Jacobs took over New York Fashion Week a full seven days before the official calendar began. The show turned 47 models into paper dolls to tell the tale of childlike wonder– which makes sense, considering the show was also a celebration of the eponymous designer’s 40th anniversary with the House. After teasing the instantly-viral hair look for Margiela couture, hair maven, Duffy dyed, blow dried, crimped and coiffed 108 human hair wigs for Marc Jacobs, inspired by Diana Ross in an ode to the “memorable and mundane,” as the show notes read.
Presented at the Park Avenue Armory, models weaved through an installation of beige, 9-foot folding tables and chairs on the runway, showing off not only stiff walks and wool coats, but also clumped, doe-eyed lashes painted with black nail polish by makeup artist Diane Kendal. Holding tight to the bouffant, like a cocktail of high hold hairsprays, the beauty looks were served up on a silver platter to a line of front row guests– including Winnie Harlow and Tremaine Emory.
Altuzarra
Joseph Alturazza celebrated theater and performance in his FW24 show. “It’s about somebody collecting their wardrobe through a lifetime and so they wanted to have that follow through in the makeup, what they were doing for the face,” Diane Kendal shared with ESSENCE. “A lot of the girls were just doing gorgeous natural skin. We lined the eye, around mascara on the top of the lashes, and filled in eyebrows where necessary. It was just really gorgeous and natural.”
Meanwhile, Jawara Wauchope, celebrity hairstylist and Global Ambassador at Dyson Hair, used Fekkai to give each model a back double-knotted pony. “We saw a lot of pictures with people dressed riding horses and we thought about this idea of semi bourgeois, but also downtown mixed together.”
Willy Chavarria
Willy Chavarria presented his show “Safe From Harm” in a cavernous hall, telling a story about love and protection through the show’s touching film and beauty looks. “For this season, there’s not a uniformity of the looks,” hair stylist Joey George tells ESSENCE. “I like to say there’s a ‘community’ of looks, this is very much about individuals that are all based within Willy’s life.”
And, at the heart of the community lies the “Mother of the house” – whose wig exploded with a gritty red color, primed and prepped with Oribe Swept Up– to set the tone of the show. Per usual, the beauty took references from Latinx culture, with makeup looks that also fit into Afro-Latinx beauty standards. From dark-lined lips to pin-thin brows, the show’s makeup “combined different elements from different times and turned it into something that is today,” as makeup artist Marco Castro says.
Helmut Lang
Picture this: You’re running late to work after spending hours in hair and makeup, and just as you start to hail a cab, a gust of wind and sudden downpours smack you in the face, smearing your makeup (which now looks more like a burglar mask than a smokey eye) and sweeps your blow out into teased matts. “We wanted to have this play on wind and rain in the hair,” Jawara tells ESSENCE. “There’s [also] a little bit of a dry element to it,” feeding into the unpredictable weather that is New York City.
“There’s more drama in the hair and makeup this season,” he continues, following last year’s reference to old New York with an updated, dramatized version we can thank Bumble and Bumble’s Strong Finish Hairspray for. Meanwhile, Daniel Sallstrom described the makeup look as “camouflage but also protection,” using MAC Chromaline to dishevel the makeup. Some models were adorned with stormy dark eyeshadows, reminiscent of a rain cloud, while others looked as if they wiped their smudged lipsticks across their cheeks.
Thom Browne
Thom Browne closed out NYFW, staging a play of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” with poetically crafted beauty looks to match. Similar to Marc Jacobs, the runway was centered around a huge installation– but this time, a black puffer-coated tree worn by a model, whose hair was sculpted into dark, whimsical branches.
In the face of front row guests– from Janet Jackson to Queen Latifah– sculptural braids and birds nest-like hairdos took center stage: twisted, curled and frozen in time under black veiled nettings. Onyx claw-like nails reached out into the audience, dragging them into Thom Browne’s hour-long drama. For makeup, the team hollowed out the models’ eye sockets with dark contour brushed along the nose, while eyebrows were either hidden or bushy above smoky, charred shadows. Lips were smacked with a uniform matte red to close the book on the season’s most dramatic collection.
