Isamaya French shines fashion week with an understated, sophisticated aesthetic.

Isamaya French’s makeup instinct is like that of a painter – and the instinct of all great painters is a natural ability. Despite the pressures of a rigidly structured, packed fashion week schedule, the French managed to use these strengths to unlock the ambivalence and magnificence.

Never afraid of boundaries or rules, French lets her wild imagination guide her work: her makeup honors the material and conceptual underpinnings of each runway presentation – their fabric qualities, subculture references, and speculative realism. For the documentary, French explains her artistic interests in New York, London, and Paris, with cuts from Dion Lee, KNWLS, Junya Watanabe, and more.

Dion Lee

Dion Lee’s collection was full of references to nature—very organic, insect-like graphics. We used fishnet fabric as a stencil to spray soft, metallic colors from Isamaya’s industrial palette to achieve a creep-like effect around the eye.

Poster girl

The girls let me tease the potential of our BROWLACQ brow gel – exaggerated, razor-sharp, piercing brows. It provided a very cool and elegant contrast to their fun, sensual, colorful outfits.

KWLS

I like to use soft metals like chrome, bronze or copper on a sculpted eye look to add more dimension. It complements the shine in the hair and the beautiful shades of the collection!

16 Arlington

We create a new, dewy foundation for the skin, clean the brushes, and [added] Punch color on the lower waterline. It gave the 16arlington look a fun and wearable twist.

Balmain

Natural glowing skin, and slightly tinted eyelashes lined with glass, with black kohl pencil for a few models. It was very consistent with the front decoration, and with the nomadic feeling of the collection.

Giambattista Valli

Giambattista loves super dewy skin, so we used all the shimmer products in the MAC collection—especially on the cheeks and lids—heavily. We added a large raindrop shaped cabochon to the fronts of a few models.

Yoji Yamamoto

For this collection, we let Eugene Souleiman’s jellyfish-inspired hair do all the talking. The natural tanned skin served as a blank canvas to bring the hair texture to life.

Junya Watanabe

One of my favorite shows of the season! Mr. Watanabe likes his models to have their own personalities, so each one wears a different look. The idea was to imagine what a New Romantic would look like if he wore his clothes today. From the early romantics (pale skin, fake mice, rosy cheeks), we had punk quotes (graphic colors and piercings) and today’s interpretation (metallic colors, blocked brows, extreme contours). It turned out to be a stimulating, quoted, but fresh melange.

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

Westwood is also a place where individual characters win a unified vision, so there were different looks in the show. The red thread was classic (and punk at the same time!) thin brows, eye liner and glossy lips.

Ottolinger

For Ottolinger, we went for a super fresh bronzed look, with baby-oil glowing skin, shimmery bath on the lids, eye contour and sun-kissed, bronzed cheeks.

Thom Browne

I love the idea of ​​using the fairytale look of the collection in terms of gold and glitter – but in an avant-garde way, with sharp, defined eyebrows, lips in metallic colors, and dark, shimmery eye shadow. The look is further elevated by the graphic net covers worn over their faces.

Yeezy

Hairstylist Charlie Le Mindu and I worked together on this vision: a no-blonde, hairless look with an almost alien head shape, which we achieved using a scrunched-up bald cap and a piece of elastic to cover the eyebrows. Both were painted with special effects makeup to achieve realistic skin tones and textures.