Step backstage at Collina Strada, where AI-inspired clothing was balanced out with a “Snatural” organic beauty

Hairstylist Evanie Frausto has been Taymour’s go-to for runway shows for a handful of years now. “The horse girl is always the starting reference point,” he says while working on a basket-weave braid in a model’s hair. He spent the week prepping kits with Bumble and Bumble (he’s the brand’s new global artistic ambassador) and finalising “billions of feet” of halo extensions, which were used to bulk up models’ heads of hair, as well as adding in different lengths, textures and shades. Then there were the ribbons, hand-cut and dyed slices of Collina Strada fabric, worked into braids like they were strands of hair growing naturally from the models’ scalps. “There’s no symmetry to the look, just a lot of playfulness,” Frausto adds. “But it still feels organic, the way a farm girl would wear it.”

For the face, make-up artist Fara Homidi utilised underpainting, or the act of contouring before applying foundation and concealer for a more subtle effect. That was her secret to giving a “snatural” look and avoiding the overly obvious stripes of make-up we associate with contouring. The cast of models, including Barbie girl Hari Nef, Tommy Dorfman, Waris Ahluwalia and Aaron Rose Philip, also got to try out an unreleased complexion product from Homidi’s line, which will debut next March.

Right before walking down the runway, a handful of models including Tallulah Willis were given an extra adornment by way of fashion’s (and Justin Bieber’s) favourite zit sticker, Starface, to “toughen them up,” Homidi says. This isn’t the first time Homidi has used the dime-size hydrocolloid stars to create a runway beauty look, though. At Puppets and Puppets’s spring/summer 2023 show, models wore them beneath their eyes like geometric raindrops.

As models walked through a rooftop garden, braids swaying, the vibe returned to Taymour’s farm-girl feeling.