How Isamaya Ffrench Made Bird Beauty a Thing
Thom Browne’s eye-catching looks closed out NYFW.
The hair and makeup teams left no crumbs with the beauty direction for the Thom Browne New York Fashion Week Show. Much like the garments, the beauty looks left viewers in awe of the avant-garde masterpieces courtesy of Isamaya Ffrench.
The show’s theme and collection were based on The Raven, the lyrical poem written by renowned author and poet Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven tells the tale of a man deep in grief after losing the love of his life, Lenore. He is visited by a talking raven, and their conversation only deepens the narrator’s introspection on grief, love and loss.
How did that transform into a runway setting? Rather successfully, actually. Grief was reimagined to a level of sophistication and spunk, intermingled with a mischievous playfulness. Browne’s iconic garment silhouettes melded with Isamaya Ffrench’s bold red lips. High-fashion funeral-like veils and headpieces in black sat atop hairstyles reminiscent of bird wings. Ffrench shared with us all the details of how she worked to transform the models into a modern rendition of Poe’s Raven.
There were two hero looks the beauty team wanted to accomplish, she told Hypebae: one emulating a raven and the other a mantis. Ffrench teamed up with Lashify to create a bird-eye look by meticulously placing false lashes on the outer corners of the eye, creating a more “animal-feline effect,” as she puts it. As for eye makeup, the team aimed to create a sculpted socket using a monochromatic palette of grey, white and black eyeshadows, creating a deep contour down the nose to play into the animal effect further. As for the bold red lippie the models wore on the runway? “That was Cardinal Red,” from Ffrench’s namesake beauty line, Isamaya Beauty, she shared.
As for the biggest glam moments in the show, she confirmed that it was all about the glitter: “We have a really amazing hero, which is totally gold. She has these amazing gold lashes and lots of gold glitter on her face: she’s this beautiful hero of the show.”
For more New York Fashion Week beauty looks, check out the coverage of Private Policy’s super slicked-back hairstyles.
