Collina Strada’s AI-Inspired Clothing Was Balanced Out With “Snatural,” Organic Beauty

Hillary Taymour’s Collina Strada shows are known for being full of excitement—the clothing is bright, the models are full of movement, and the beauty looks are always something to behold. And while the genesis of the designs for spring 2024 started with AI, the beauty was anything but artificial.

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 finalizing “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, makeup artist Fara Homidi utilized 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 makeup 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) favorite 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 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.