Back in May 2021, Machine Gun Kelly turned as much as the Billboard Music Awards together with his tongue dyed pitch black. Had the rapper just kicked off the following recent trend, beauty press across the web breathlessly wondered? But no, it seemed that not many individuals were keen on staining their tongues with a still unidentified substance and the speculation faded away as all of us moved on to the following thing.

Until now. At his AW23 show in London this weekend, designer Chet Lo sent models down the catwalk with tongues dyed vivid shades of red, green and blue. The look took inspiration from bioluminescence – the sunshine produced by living organisms used to lure prey, attack predators and attract mates – the central theme and title of the gathering. However it wasn’t just the models who sported the colorful appendage. As he took to the runway at the top of the presentation, Lo showed off his own tongue, dyed vibrant blue, in addition to his teeth which were stained in the identical toxic hue.

The look got here courtesy of Isamaya Ffrench, who headed up the make-up for the show. Alongside the tongues, models got wispy clumped lashes and purple iridescent eyeshadow from Ffrench’s namesake range. On hair, was Anna Cofone who created sculptural up-dos that looped up and around unencumbered by gravity.

Chet Lo wasn’t the one designer who had a good time with beauty this season. Blue eyeshadow dominated the runway due to Connor Ives and Dilara Fındıkoğlu, while Simone Rocha showed an abundance of ribbons and Mowalola gave us fairy light faces. Listed here are our top faves.

For her collection this season, Simone Rocha looked to the Irish harvest festival of Lughnasadh as inspiration. The result was bounteous silhouettes and puffed-out dresses filled with real hay and macramé straw. When it got here to the sweetness, it was all about red ribbons which adorned the hair, clothes and even eyes of the models, which represented the blood that was traditionally painted on children’s faces to ward off bad spirits. 

Thomas de Kluyver kept the make-up youthful and naive, while Cyndia Harvey on hair created curled braids and ringlets which covered the eyes of the models. “We brought the hair forward onto the face, with one eye peeking through a number of curls that felt weather-beaten and barely destroyed, and braids that got here forward onto the face, again with curled ends,” she told Vogue.

Blue eyeshadow

The long-time favourite of heroines in cult movies, blue eyeshadow has been making a comeback over the previous couple of months and LFW cemented this return. At shows like Connor Ives and Dilara Fındıkoğlu models walked the runway with pale blue eye looks courtesy of Lucy Bridge and Ana Takahashi respectively.

Di Petsa

The breaking, healing and rebirth of the self was the theme of Di Petsa’s AW23 collection which looked to Persephone and mythology for inspiration. Models walked the runway in wet-look gowns and leather corseted dresses, some burning sage, some pregnant.

When it got here to the sweetness, Crystabel Riley used her signature natural materials on the face to create make-up that looked just like the models had come from the ocean and had salt crystallising on their skin. Wet, slicked hair by Efi Davies was long and flowing or slicked into finger waves added to that illusion and emphasised the fluids motif that’s so central to Dimitra Petsa’s work.

Dark and twisted were the words to explain the gathering at Mowalola this season, which appeared to take inspiration from an end-of-days Recent York City, churned through a meat grinder of doomsday anxieties. The sweetness looks added to this effect; courtesy of Isamaya Ffrench, faces were completely covered by fake freckles using Isamaya Beauty and combined with fairy lights making a dark futurism aesthetic while the hair by Claire Moore was kept loose and natural.