Couture is the stuff of dreams, and the makeup and hair looks beautifying the fashion were also out-of-this-world on the recent fall 2026 couture runways.
At Dior, the show’s beauty looks began with a simple conversation. Peter Philips, the house’s makeup creative and image director, said Dior’s creative director Jonathan Anderson explained: “There’s a lot of metallics, because of the collaborations with the artist.
“There’s metallic headpieces, a lot of metallic details in the handbags, and then there’s a lot of green,” Philips continued. Serendipitously, he has a green makeup palette, called Charmed Green, coming out this fall for which Anderson collaborated on the case, with a clover theme.
At Dior for fall 2026 couture.
Photo by Delphine Achard/WWD
“It’s got a beautiful, like almost a golden-green metallic in it,” Philips said, of the color cosmetics, adding there’s also chartreuse and pastel green. A metallic green nail polish is upcoming, too.
Anderson adored the rhinestone eyeliner Philips had conjured up for the Dior cruise collection in Los Angeles in May. So he played with all those elements, including glitter in shades of green.
“A few girls have got the eyeliner, a few girls have got the eye shadow, some are nude faces, some have the deep green eye shadow eyeliner,” Philips said. “And voilà! It was a bit of a conversation about color, about texture.”
At Peet Dullaert, hairstylist Bianca van Zwieten also channeled the fashion design.
“The starting point came from Peet Dullaert‘s own vision for the collection, a dialogue between artistic heritage and contemporary creation, inspired by Rembrandt’s portraits,” she said. “He was searching for that fine line between classical reference and modern design, and we wanted to translate that directly into the hair.
“So I created hand-painted wefts in the colors and tones of the collection, and kept the base hair very simple and clean,” van Zwieten said. “The wefts were placed over the top to extend the design language of the garments straight into the hair, connecting the look and the hair.”
It was achieved through hand-painting on individual wefts, using Goldwell color.
“I mixed the tones myself, and it took real time to get them right, because we wanted the colors to read as bright and expressive, but still controlled, not too loud,” she said. “More of a modest, refined brightness that stayed true to the collection rather than overpowering it.”
Makeup artist Andrew Gallimore took a cue from Iris van Herpen’s reference points — sonic starquakes, cosmic energy, light, lightning, fractals.
At Iris van Herpen fall 2026 couture.
Photo by Delphine Achard/WWD
“I wanted the girls to look otherworldly, like celestial beings from another universe,” Gallimore said.
The four main beauty groupings he developed included “Moonbathed Skin,” involving platinum pearl and champagne-shimmer versions, and bleached eyebrows on models.
“’Celestial Skin’ was created using Anastasia Beverly Hills Impeccable Foundation and concealer to perfect the models’ skin, then pearl highlights across the eyelid, brow bone and cheekbone,” Gallimore continued. “A couple of these girls had sharp, straight, customized feather fronds, applied as a graphic lash adornment, like a starburst, diffraction spike, coming outwards from the outer corner of the eye.”
“Cosmic Halo” bathed models’ eyes and forehead with glowing ivory, white, bleached teal and champagne-colored eye shadow.
“[They were] delicately blended from the center of the forehead outwards, with a touch under the eyes,” Gallimore said.
