GOOD SPORT: EUGENE RULES VOGUE WORLD

THE AWARD-WINNING SESSION STYLIST TAKES US BACK TO THE SWINGING ‘60S

IMAGE FROM VOGUE YOUTUBE

IMAGE FROM @TRAVISBALCKE

Paris is never too busy for a fashion show. Especially one with supermodels Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner on horseback, Bad Bunny rapping, Sabrina Carpenter channelling Brigitte Bardot and Katy Perry in a leather harness. Vogue World: Paris, the first fashion show ever held in the Place Vendôme, was fashion’s unofficial opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics, celebrating 100 years of French fashion by pairing each decade with a different sport, from cycling to breakdancing.

And when the event’s chief orchestrator, Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, had to choose a hairdresser to lead the hair looks for the 151 models and 70 dancers participating, it was Eugene Souleiman’s number she called. “When I first got approached for Vogue World, I thought, ‘This sounds really great’, but then when I got sent the actual details of the job, I was like, ‘Oh, shit. What have I got myself into?’. The scale of what I had to do was unreal – for two months I worked non-stop coming up with different styles for each decade for them to choose from. I mean, when I work with a designer creating the hair looks for their catwalk show, it takes at least a month – this was like doing 10 shows rolled into one. Luckily, Anna liked everything I put in front of her.

IMAGE FROM @CLAUDINETHEQUEEN

“Ultimately, this huge number of models and performers – by far the biggest undertaking of my career – would result in a show lasting no more than 60 minutes. I had a team of 150 assistants to help me get things done. For two weeks we prepped in The Ritz Hotel, which sounds amazing, but there just wasn’t the space to fit everyone into one room, so I was literally running upstairs, downstairs, along corridors… Physically, it was exhausting.

“The day of the show was unbelievable. So many people, everywhere. There was a girl with a megaphone who was stood right beside me and she kept shouting, ‘We need the girls in five minutes!’. We were meant to have six hours with the models but the reality was we’d only had them for an hour and a half because of all the rehearsals and getting their make-up done, etc. [Lead make-up artist] Pat McGrath and I worked out a system to try and keep things on track but let’s just say it was intense.

“GETTING INTO A CAR WITH 120 WIGS THEN GETTING STUCK IN TRAFFIC FOR TWO HOURS ON A JOURNEY THAT  YOU COULD HAVE WALKED IN 15 MINUTES, AND THEN THEY DROP OFF AT THE WRONG DOOR... YOU’VE JUST GOT  TO EMBRACE IT AND LET IT HAPPEN AND DEAL WITH IT. AND IT HELPS TO HAVE A DARK, SICK SENSE OF HUMOUR.”

“My favourite section from a hair perspective was Fencing. The look I created felt very familiar – like, you would look at it and think, ‘Oh, Eugene did that, right?’. It was based on Paco Rabanne and his clothing from the ‘60s, where he used a lot of metal. And because it was fencing, I wanted the hair to be like a form of protection or armour, a helmet. We tried a lot of things – tin foil, grips, stuff like that – but we liked the idea that this armour would be made of hair accessories and eventually we found a hair pin that gave us the reflectiveness we wanted. It looked like some medieval chainmail that came down the hair and sat in on the neck and then came over the shoulders. It was beautiful.

“Vogue World was stressful, but it was also fun, and I am so proud of my team because things got really hectic but they pulled it off. They were exhausted but happy. The only thing I can compare it to is like a band finishing off their tour at the O2 or Carnegie Hall – it pulled everyone together. And then straight afterwards came Couture and you get someone saying, ‘Can you make your hair look like concrete?’ and you’re like, ‘Yeah, sure…’”

IMAGE FROM VOGUE

“YOU KNOW I LIKE A HAIR CLIP – AND I THINK I MIGHT  HAVE OUTDONE MYSELF HERE. I WANTED TO COVER THE  HEAD IN SILVER GRIPS, LIKE IT WAS AN ARMOUR OF  PROTECTION. THEN WE STITCHED THE SWORD INTO A BRAIDED AREA – IT’S QUITE A  BIT OF WORK. WE USED AROUND 200 HAIR CLIPS.”