If an obsessively involved, zillion-dollar beauty routine was self-care for the first half of Trump’s first term, drawing fangs and mustaches on your face to look intimidating but friendly is the self-care for the second. Why pretend everything is fine when it is not? Why cover up your internal anxieties with a glossy complexion when, in fact, you feel like an angsty vampire who wants to fuck shit up for the greater good?
Channeling a cheerier version of A Clockwork Orange, designer Alexandra Moura closed out Milan Fashion Week with the only party makeup we recognize, crayon drawings of sun eyes and messed up fangs. It was meant to be surrealist, inspired by the Portuguese artist Rosa Ramalho, but I posit that it is in fact just realist. They talk about putting on your game face, and increasingly for me that means garish war paint that says I mean business, and my business is freaking you out a little bit. Moura’s show notes, per Reuters:
“(Ramalho) was a countryside worker with a sense of aesthetics and intelligence very ahead of her time. The contrast between her visionary art and her simple countryside life is a key element to the collection’s development ... Fantastic beings, monsters and beasts gave life to details, drawings, the mix and overlap of materials, color palette and quotes.”
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The words “not a dream at all”, written in Portuguese, were painted on some of the outfits.
Her inspo, for a show she called Bestarío:
The clothes were sort of magical, too, understated tartans with an industrial-age period-piece vibe, like if you blink the wearers will show their true changeling nature.
But it really was all about the make-up, playful faces for alebrije cosplay, because we all need a little bit of protection sometimes. Catch me in the club with fangs drawn on my face!