WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
Cult films inspiring beauty trends of the season—or vice versa? Anne Lee investigates.
Elsa Schiaparelli once said, “What Hollywood designs today, you will be wearing tomorrow.” The romance between fashion and film blossomed in the summer of 1911 when French master couturier Paul Poiret had his Eastern fantasy collection—contentious harem pants included—shot on film, opening fashion’s doors to the broader public, once accessible only by society’s elites. Later during Hollywood’s Golden Age when film stars began to be embodiments of glamour, Parisian designers such as Hubert de Givenchy and Coco Chanel became household names as they dressed actresses Audrey Hepburn and Mae West for their films. Fast forward to Chanel Autumn/Winter ’17, creative director Karl Lagerfeld paid homage to Barbarella through a life-size spaceship at the Grand Palais in Paris. Inspired by Jane Fonda’s voluminous hair and smokey eye make-up in the 1968 movie, hair maestro Sam McKnight devised a bouffant hairstyle that he dubbed “Chanelarella”. To complement that and the ’60s headbands, make-up artist Tom Pecheux drew a dramatic eye made up of metallic silver eyeshadow, clumpy lashes, and graphic liner.
EYES WIDE OPEN
The Twiggy-inspired clumpy, doll-like lashes continued at Jeremy Scott with statement looks by make-up pro Kabuki, who cut out strips of lashes and spaced them out along the lower lash line to give the illusion of bigger, rounder eyes à la A Clockwork Orange. Similarly, at MSGM, celebrity makeup artist Miranda Joyce described the top and bottom lashes she worked on the models as “a beauty with a little twist, a kind of interesting woman who might be in a David Lynch movie, so she might have something to hide. She is a little bit sinister.”
SPIRITED AWAY
The realm of collision of these two worlds is indeed where fantasy and hyperbole are built on and realised. With the recent release of Blade Runner 2049, designers were once again drawn to its strong ’40s-meets-punk futuristic fashion. Among them was Raf Simons who presented