On the final stop of the spring/summer 2025 season, Paris fashion week rang in a number of viral moments. This included Cardi B’s knockout front row beauty looks and shows which shared the same weight.
Mugler, for one, channeled the ‘90s with a sliced-up angular curtain bang. Then, Acne Studios turned wigs into twisted pixies while Junya Watanabe presented sci-fi Ex Machina-inspired makeup.
Below, ESSENCE breaks down the top beauty moments from the Paris Fashion Week runways.
Last season, Pat McGrath’s career-defining porcelain skin at Maison Margiela’s Artisanal Couture show took the cake for the most iconic fashion week beauty moment, arguably, in history. However, for spring/summer 2025, Mugler pulled off an equally fantastical moment— digging up archival beauty references to celebrate the house’s darkly dramatic 50th anniversary.
In front of (and on) Cardi B, striking curtain bangs by wigmaker Zhou Xue Ming went viral for their sliced, vision-shielding sheathes of hair. The hair pieces, which evolved from their ‘90s fascinators of season’s past, turning wigs into an updated re-interpretation of the fashion codes they’re known for.
At Junya Watanabe, the sci-fi/thriller film Ex Machina prompted makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench to turn models into a robot-human hybrid, adding to the twisted fantasies of Paris fashion week. “We’re creating a perfect effect, almost mask-like shape around the face, black contact lenses, sculpted out, getting rid of the eyebrows,” Ffrench said on Instagram of the look that was finished with lilac highlight (using the color “Sweat” from Isamaya Beauty’s Industrial Colour Pigments Palette).
On the hair, shiny, asymmetrical bald caps keyed by hair stylist Eugeine Souleiman reminds us just how in season hair pieces are (think: Mugler), putting a dark twist on last season’s doll-ish beauty.
Pixie cuts and bobs didn’t end when summer did. At Acne Studios’s SS25 show, a ‘50s housewife wig found a middle ground between both in terms of cut, while the style itself mimicked twisted kiss curls. By far one of the most trend-relevant styles of the season thanks to hair stylist Anthony Turner, makeup artist Karin Westerlund, who doubled down on the tradwife look with traces of yellow eyeshadow and kiss-ready lips.
Under the umbrella of Comme Des Garcons, Noir Kei Ninomiya tapped hair stylist Ryoji Imaizumi for a collection of twisted hair moments. A look often used with pin curls, Imaizumi twisted and bobby-pinned frizzed strands into an afro-like shape with bronze hair accessories sitting on top. Meanwhile, other looks were more bouffant and explosive, matted into Marie Antoinette costume wigs from centuries past.
Makeup artist Shu Uemura paired the looks with ‘90s grunge makeup, but instead of the normal taupe tones, he used red eyeshadow and lipstick to add a layer of mysterious romanticism to the collection.
At Rick Owens’s Paris fashion week collection entitled “Hollywood”, the weight of celebrity sin is shown through biblical-inspired makeup—angular gray eyeshadow, bloodshot partied-in eye liner, and black-colored contacts—and headpieces.
One message: God save Hollywood.
