Outside of Loewe this afternoon, celebrities congregated (Catherine O’Hara! Pharrell! Meg Ryan!) while inside the Chateau de Vincennes, the beauty looks lit up the scene backstage. “Jonathan talked about having a few stronger characters in the show,” hairstylist Guido Palau told me of ideating with creative director Jonathan Anderson. What they settled on was “kind of boyish and futuristic with this pop of fluoro color,” he says of referencing manga for inspiration. “They look cartoony in a way,” he adds, relaxing in his chair next to a table piled high with plastic bags filled with hair pieces dyed shades of flame red, lagoon blue, and what colourist Antonia Cometa calls “avatar green”.
On models around the room, Cometa’s colorful extensions were layered into black wigs that Palau and his team shaped into anime bowl-cut bangs at the front, with a tight three-strand braid down the back. It was “Jonathan himself,” he says, who chose the models that would wear them based on the pieces in the collection, like Canlan Wang and Ziru Yang in matching teal bangs and plaid shirt-dresses, or Peris Adolwi in a mint button-down and green fringe. “There is kind of a method to it,” says Palau, noting that his new Zara Hairspray (out soon) is the hero product keeping the “very regular braid” in the back “super clean.”
Steps away, make-up artist Pat McGrath works her magic–with the help of her team–to gently enhance skin that she describes as “hyperreal modern portraiture.” She points out that everyone has their own personality today. “It’s a study of every person in the show’s face,” she says. “And it’s done to look very natural.” Her Pat McGrath Labs products like Divine Skin Rose 001 The Essence, Skin Fetish Sublime Perfection Foundation, Skin Fetish Sublime Perfection Blurring Under-Eye Powder and OG cult-favourite Skin Fetish Highlighter + Balm Duo are the hero products for an effect that she credits as “refined eccentricity, in a way.”
It’s a bold look and a starry turnout all around, and it isn’t lost on Cometa. “We had these very natural girls, and then he wanted to have these kind of weirdos that stuck out,” she says of working with Anderson on the last minute dye jobs. “I love a weirdo–I’m a weirdo.” This is the London-based artist’s first Loewe show, though she also works with houses like Dior and Prada. “You always hear the big names with the big brands and the big hair salons, whereas I’m just one little lone wolf,” she says. “I think for a freelancer, I do feel quite proud of that.”
She started sweeping hair in a salon at age 12, and now she’s here sharing the secret to rich-but-not-neon color (“a little touch of black dye”) and looking forward to more theatrical looks on the runway. “I hope that we are moving into a time where things are a lot more dramatic,” she says of a renewed interest this season in powerful beauty looks on the catwalk. “It’s amazing to see really bold colors in hair, and I just want more of it.”