We exclusively speak to Christopher Kane, hair stylist Anthony Turner and make-up artist Lucia Pieroni backstage at yesterday's sensational A/W12 show...
They say nice guys finish last, not in the case of Christopher Kane who season after season continues to wow his crowds. The hottest ticket in London right now; whilst most shows are normally held up for Anna Wintour’s arrival, for Kane’s show the US Vogue editor turned up 30 minutes early to meet the designer backstage before watching run-throughs from the empty rows of purple carpeted seating.
What followed was a sensational follow-up to his S/S12 show. Again taking place on the expansive third floor space of the One New Change complex, there was a continuation on floral beading, embroidery and brocades. However in terms of the aesthetic the airy iridescence of S/S12 took a total U-turn for A/W12, becoming much darker and more sinister with a colour palette of black, purple, deep blue and blood red.
The clothes...
“We worked with moiré last season but didn’t put it in the show as it was too hard and aggressive,” explained Kane to AnOther backstage. “The floral brocades made it into this season but we upped the ante. Padded leather as just a detailed outline, geometric shapes, tough chain, 3D embroidery with wires.” And in terms of this season’s “girl”, Kane was inspired by Joseph Szabo’s image of Priscilla smoking, from the photographer’s Teenage series: “Just really hostile, evil little girls in night clubs smoking cigarettes.”
"She doesn’t give a shit about her hair, it is what it is, it’s tucked behind the ears, even the centre parting isn’t perfect, it’s messy"
The hair...
“She’s a cool girl, she’s nonchalant, young and youthful,” explained hair stylist Anthony Turner, “We didn’t want to do a ‘do, we didn’t want to do anything that was too much of a statement. The biggest discussion we had was where the part was going to go. Christopher wanted this girl that other girls could relate to. He mentioned this teenage girl that listens to Nirvana. She doesn’t give a shit about her hair, it is what it is, it’s tucked behind the ears, even the centre parting isn’t perfect, it’s messy. Hair is thin and lank, and for girls with really thick hair we took a section from the top of the ears all the way back and then braided the underneath and let the top of the hair drop over. You never see the braid but you get rid of the excess hair beneath so it’s really thin, very young, grungy and natural.”
"It’s this nice almost Brooke Shields eyebrow – thick, bushy, healthy – with not too much of a shape, it’s more about your own personal face and eyebrow shape"
The make-up...
Lucia Pieroni creating bold brows with radiant, glowing skin and barely-there shades for a look that she described as tough: “She’s a little bit androgynous, a little bit boyish but incredibly feminine and beautiful at the same time in her purity. She’s got these strong, quite cross-looking but natural eyebrows we created using three different NARS eyebrow colours. It’s this nice almost Brooke Shields eyebrow – thick, bushy, healthy – with not too much of a shape, it’s more about your own personal face and eyebrow shape.
We teamed the brows with a Copacabana that swoops across the eyes and the top of the cheekbones. It’s that thing of enhancing your face even when you’re using shading with nude-y, taupe-y, brown colours to make your eyes look really big, but you don’t really know you’ve got any make-up on – there’s an art to that and it can look amazingly beautiful. Christopher doesn’t like make-up that much so it’s fun trying to wangle it in there; there’s always a little twist in an eyeliner and eyebrow, but always very glowing and gorgeous girls.”
Text by Lucia Davies
