Renowned celebrity and editorial hairstylist, Eugene Souleiman, who also serves as Global Professional Ambassador at KEVIN.MURPHY, led the hair direction for Collina Strada’s Delirium in Bloom PS27 presentation at Copenhagen Fashion Week, creating a series of looks that blurred the boundaries between hair, textile and sculpture. In a triumph, Souleiman softened the edges of science fiction.
Presented as part of Copenhagen Fashion Week’s 20th anniversary, Collina Strada’s Creative Director, Hillary Taymour, constructed the collection entirely from fabrics, trims, notions and remnants accumulated throughout Collina Strada’s history. Familiar materials were fully reimagined and given new identities through pleating, twisting, layering, patchworking and sculpting.
Souleiman approached the hair design with the same instinct for transformation, saying “A lot of the inspiration came from intergalactic aerial imagery from NASA’s Hubble Telescope — these incredible landscapes of sparkling gas, intense color and strange astral formations. I wanted the hair to feel otherworldly, interplanetary, weird, bright and beautiful all at once.”
He adds, “For me, it’s about not looking at hair simply as a hairdresser, but looking at it as a creative and as an artist. We’re treating hair as a fabric, which is essentially what it is. We’re taking it out of the salon and sending it into a dreamscape. Everything I did came from feeling and making things up as we went along.”
“Hillary has revisited elements of her previous collections and upcycled her past, and we’ve done the same. We used actual fabric from previous Collina Strada collections and repurposed it within the hair. Ultimately, we’re having fun. That’s the most important thing — to enjoy it,” Says Soulieman.
Noting the collection was about delirium, Souleiman’s hair design was appropriately zany. Two looks, “Couture Disco” and “Space Fairy.” Souleiman says. “If Victor Frankenstein were a hairdresser, this is how he would design hair — bits of everywhere brought together into this mad pattern.”
Keep reading for more on the show’s main looks as well as the exact KEVIN.MURPHY products used by Souleiman and team backstage.
Couture Disco
The first of the show’s looks, Couture Disco, took the classic updo into another orbit. Built organically on each model, hair was first prepped with FRESH.HAIR dry shampoo and ANTI.GRAVITY volumizer to create the base, adding texture, body and workable volume before being manipulated into sculptural, abstract forms. SESSION.SPRAY strong hold finishing spray was then layered throughout to build structure and hold as the shape developed.
Souleiman shares, “Couture Disco is an updo, but it’s the updo after a storm in the galaxy. It has this chaotic, abstract weirdness happening within it. We used a lot of SESSION.SPRAY — because I love it — building the hair up and creating structure with the hair itself as we went.”
Space Fairy
For Space Fairy, the silhouette moved closer to the head while the finish became even more fantastical. Souleiman saturated the hair with SESSION.SPRAY, using the hairspray almost as a gel before wetting and compressing the hair close against the scalp beneath a net. Tinsel and glitter were then incorporated into the finished looks, creating a reflective, extraterrestrial surface. Galactic glam.
Souleiman explains, “we used SESSION.SPRAY almost like a gel. We sprayed it flat into the hair, close to the scalp, got the hair wet and then squashed it down with a net before adding tinsel and glitter. We really went for it. Nothing about this show is halfway — everything is very much in your face, which is what I really like. More is more.”
If you get inspired to recreate any of these looks, tag @readthetease on Instagram and TikTok.
