To start off the month, bouffant wigs at Marc Jacobs and Willy Chavvaria took over NYFW, while Beyoncé’s front row appearance at Luar and Thom Browne’s fairytale play shut it all down. The high vibrations continued into London Fashion Week this week as well. Despite the city’s drab, gray skies, 40th anniversary celebrations didn’t end with Marc Jacobs’ viral New York show.
That’s right– this season marked a celebration of London Fashion Week’s 40th birthday as well, inviting Simone Rocha’s romantic rose vine makeup and Chet Lo’s X-men-inspired spiked braids to the runway. At JW Anderson, they don’t care if you’re scared of growing old as they used gray wigs to turn 20-somethings into suburban grandmothers. Meanwhile, Dilara Fındıkoğlu followed no trends with freestyled makeup looks for their Femme Vortex show. And to bring it all home, Naomi Campbell walked Burberry for the most British show of LFW.
Below, you’ll find 5 of our favorite beauty looks from the Fall/Winter 2024 season in London.
Chet Lo
Isamaya Ffrench was on makeup for Chet Lo, which turned tears into molten chrome with silver eyeshadows– keyed with the Isamaya Beauty Industrial Colour Pigments Palette. The cosmic metallic tones created steel gazes, with drool dripping from the corners of the mouth. “‘I want it like X-men!’” Ffrench tells Vogue, recalling a last-minute text message from the designer. “This collection is about reawakening that strength in all of us,” designer Chet Lo says on Instagram. Which is why nail artist Angel My Linh gave models sharpened Wolverine claws, and hair stylist Anna Cofone used products from Authentic Beauty Concept to sculpt wolf-spiked braids– which are the latest take on Chet Lo’s original durian fruit textures.
Simone Rocha
Less than a month ago, Simone Rocha was the guest designer for the Jean Paul Gaultier couture show in Paris, which saw 35 models turned into folkloric fairies. Makeup artist Thomas de Kluyver used blinding ornamentation to cluster baroque crystals around the brows, eyes, and lips, and this season’s FW24 collection echoed in the same realm. But instead of crystals on the face, they were tattooed on the skin underneath sheerly ruched clothing while romantic rose vines were painted over foundation-covered eyebrows.
On hair, Eugene Souleiman slicked and wrapped the strands into a flower at the ear. The hairstyles put us back into the gel-coma of last season– which have since been replaced with bouffant wigs––with one model having hers braided into a rose. Like Luar’s NYFW show, which saw a villager chic mood, Rocha described grim, mythical spirits in the “final chapter in a triptych” which translated into discolored, smokey nails by nail artist Ama Quashie.
JW Anderson
Inspired by “odd type” British characters and Gen-Z’s nostalgic yearnings, the hair team at JW Anderson gave models salt-‘n-pepper wigs effectively turning young people into their suburban grandmothers. The collection is “an inquiry into dressing as a psychological act, looking next door,” writes the brand on Instagram. “A gray wig as a device” was used to represent grotesque everydayness (think: the mundane 9-foot folding table and chairs at Marc Jacobs’ NYFW show). As for makeup artist Lynsey Alexander? She created a standout warm red lip using Merit Beauty’s Signature Lip.
Dilara Fındıkoğlu
Remember Maison Margiela’s viral couture week show? Well, Turkish-British fashion designer Dilara Fındıkoğlu tapped the Margiela’s movement director, Pat Boguslawski, to orchestrate their theatrical FW24 show entitled Femme Vortex. To complement slow, seductive, and albeit enticing walks, hair stylist Eugene Souleiman channeled a tamed, diva-bumped chaos. This meant Richie Shazam’s dreamy slicked roots with teased ends and Kai Isaiah Jamal’s straight back afro stole the show.
Makeup artist Daniel Sallstrom freestyled makeup looks. This included everything from powdery matte foundations with orange-toned blush and blue chalky contour, to skeptical pin-thin brows and creamy pigmented red cheeks. Nails followed suit, thanks to Liia Zotova, who gave models red and black tips ribboned like ballet shoes, while others were fitted with oversized chunky nails to go with their discombobulated beauty looks.
Naomi Campbell for Burberry
It wouldn’t be London Fashion Week without Burberry and Naomi Campbell. Presented in London’s Victoria Park, Creative Director Daniel Lee drove a textured outdoor runway into a gritty pin-up of early 2000s beauty looks. In other words, the runway was filled with tied head scarves and neck embellishments. Campbell’s hair was more polished than the other models’ windswept looks, while blush contoured her prominent cheekbones and oiled, porcelain highpoints.