Simplistically complicated” was the oxymoron Eugene Souleiman used to describe the sleek, sculptural heads at Haider Ackermann. “We’re looking at hair as a medium and a fabric, not a hairstyle.” A wig wrap was crafted before a black cap was slipped over top. Next, three black hair bands were interspersed with three ultrasmooth hair extensions glued on from various directions. The end result—”Constantin Brancusi meets Greta Garbo”—wasn’t necessarily where Souleiman started. “I’ve done four fittings for this show. When the collection changes, I change—and I changed at two this morning,” he explained just a few hours later, coffee in hand.
“Everything in this collection is quite big and can be interpreted as slightly heavy, and I don’t want the beauty to feel that way.” This was the brief face painter Yadim received from Ackermann. The ultimate solution: “brows that feel as if they are being lifted by tape.” The makeup artist borrowed bolts of taupe and black elastic string from Souleiman to craft quite expressive arches. It was one of the first elements he noticed upon looking at reference pictures of “eccentric society women somewhere in the realm of Diana Vreeland” with the designer. “They all had these smug brows,” he noted. “Cold” skin served as the backdrop for this defining feature, which involved taking both lighter and darker complexions to extremes. “Haider was obsessed with the girls looking pale,” he noted, which was done using MAC Face and Body Foundation in 1 and 2. On the flip side, girls with darker skin tones had their complexions deepened with Studio Finish Skin Corrector in a chocolate shade tinged with blue—similar to “Alek Wek shot by Herb Ritts in the nineties, or Grace Jones.”
