Montreal fashion week backstage beauty: Denis Gagnon, Barilà, Annie 50, and Anomal Couture
The anticipation for Denis Gagnon was palpable and sneaking early into the show’s venue, the Birks store in downtown Montreal, was my breaking point. High Versaille-esque ceilings and rows of glass-encased jewels persisted knowledge that Monsieur Gagnon’s show was the one to see. The Birks staff kitchen upstairs doubled as the show’s hair and makeup studio but, moments after I stepped off the freight elevator, stylist Denis Binet said to me, “Hair is natural, it’s nothing”. His idea of nothing really meant perfectly placed hair-ties and carefree fly-aways that looked more careful to me. Final touches of rich merlot-red lips were applied to a dozen or so youthful models, who all wore clean dewy faces and a nonappearance of mascara and blush. By blending an orange-red and a blue-red together, Amelie Ducharme improvised deeply seductive lips against otherwise virginal features and rivalled the aristocracy of the adornments downstairs.
Spotted backstage at Barilà, a crimper was Binet‘s pièce de résistance in turning hair into shapes like puffed-up balloons. Keeping the roots flat, smooth, and side-parted with Sebastian Professional Craft Clay, Binet’s two-texture crowns looked turn-of-the-century-come-disco-party, and totally cool. For the same show, makeup artist Amelie Ducharme thought of Northern Italy when she created wheat- and barley-coloured faces with blocked-out eyebrows and earthy brown lips. At Annie 50, Binet was inspired not by the ’70s but by a friend’s Swiss/Norwegian daughter to create long, naturally wavy hair that was ornamented with white embroidered head bands. Candy-pink lips and shimmery golden eyes were added to give girls the appearance of a recent vacation in Capri. Anomal Couture went New Age geisha with tennis ball–sized styrofoam spheres embedded into the centre of super-high ponytails and secured into place as figurative updos. Graphic eyeliner and creamy bright-pink cheeks added to the structural formation of the week’s most unexampled looks thus far.
