Moschino Serves Up Bright, Paint-Splotched Chignons at Milan Fashion Week
“This is the best hairdresser in the world!” proclaimed Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele while backstage at tonight’s Moschino show, gesturing to Julien d’Ys, the man behind many an iconic cut (see Linda Evangelista’s ‘90s bob) and out-of-this-world hair fantasy (see Céline Dion’s otherworldly hairpieces). A master of many trades, including painting, sculpting, and drawing, it was the dexterity of the former that was on display this evening as Moschino’s parade of bombshells—including Bella and Gigi Hadid, Kaia Gerber, Imaan Hammam, and Adut Akech—came down the runway.
“Muses inspire artists and artists inspire the world,” read the show notes of designer Jeremy Scott, who was inspired by a modern painter you might have heard of: Pablo Picasso. “We’re completely in the world of Picasso,” said d’Ys, dipping a brush into his wooden paint palette as the Habanera from Georges Bizet’s Carmen played inside the hallowed halls of the Palazzo del Ghiaccio. “I’m a painter, I’m an artist, and I knew I was the right person to do this.”
Inspired by the traditions of Picasso’s native Spain, d’Ys crafted a crowd of Spanish-style chignons, each model either wearing a custom wig or having their lengths parted down the middle, twisted at the base of the neck, and pinned into a voluminous knot. “Every woman looks beautiful with this style—it’s very strong,” explained d’Ys. But that was only the beginning of his idiosyncratic homage: the multidisciplinary stylist administered gestural strokes of paint in shades of red, pink, blue, green, and yellow down the hair for a “touch of color.”
Offsetting the shocks of pigment, makeup artist Kabuki sought to “evoke Picasso, but in a minimalistic way” by saturating the lips in MAC’s Retro Matte Liquid Lipcolor in cult red shade Feels So Grand and tracing on black negative-space liner in thin, extended wings. Imbuing perennial classics with painterly accents, the Picasso beauty equation brought an imaginative, all-encompassing surrealism to Milan.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
