“I’ve never walked a fashion show before,” Tommy Dorfman admits backstage inside SoHo’s new THCNYC space, where teams are preparing for a multilevel Collina Strada experience. “She’s gracefully turning me into a little bunny bride,” she continues, speaking of creative director Hillary Taymour, who’s morphing models into farm animals with the help of make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench.
Ffrench’s team spent days in Taymour’s studio painting each prosthetic piece to reflect the collection’s tonal fabrics. “I really want it to be fluid, and part of the look that didn’t feel too costume, and Isamaya and her team did such a good job,” Taymour says, adding that flora and fauna is the focus of her “Please Don’t Eat My Friends” theme this season. “It’s about community and all the buzzwords, be vegetarian, eat your broccoli, you know, all that stuff,” she says as Ffrench’s team bustles around adding chunky Bioglitz biodegradable glitter to the pointy ears glued atop her real set.
“The show is very characterful,” says Ffrench amid a mishmash of palettes, a few of her own products like Rubberlash, and piles of Dieux skincare. “Hillary wanted to create these fun and uplifting creatures,” she says, motioning to the transformations happening around her like Rustee Engman as a pierced-up rooster, Sasha Frovola in horse ears, and Eva Nelson slowly becoming a pig. Upstairs, Evanie Frausto hand-knots “dressage” hairpieces inspired by intricate show-pony braids. Crowns of natural hair will be doused in a few Bumble products, like Bb. Tonic Lotion and Bb Bond-Building Repair Oil Serum, for believable downtown texture; others will wear what Frausto calls “pastel, grungy, washed out” wigs. Dorfman’s is pink, and she’s been practicing her character’s walk. “I’m not going to Meryl Streep this runway,” she says. “But I’m gonna give it all I got.”
