Report by Anna-Marie Solowij

Photography by Fabio Boraso

“White is the equivalent of a week at a spa: the ultimate clean sweep”

With its focus on frills and flounces executed entirely in white, Eun Jeong’s show on the first day of London Fashion Week forged an unlikely cross-Atlantic link with Marc Jacobs, who had also championed white with ruffles. That wasn’t the only connection, as both designers chose make-up looks themed around the colour white, too.For Jeong’s show, sponsored by L’

Oréal Paris, make-up artist Polly Osmond sketched on white eyeliner, lipstick and highlighter, which cast the girls as ghostly apparitions appearing out of a haze of frizzed hair (above). White make-up is hard to wear, but Osmond proved its prettifying potential, lining the inside of the eyelids to avoid that pink-eyed look. In New York, Jacobs had presented his girls modernist Kabuki-style, with chalk-whitened skin and cherry lips à la Tina Chow. Other US designers doing white included Calvin Klein, Michael Kors and Donna Karan, and, in London, Emilio de la Morena, whose polished looks were shown on marble-skinned models. This kind of seemingly unexplained coincidence is the stuff of major trends.

The references to Rifat Ozbek’s seismic all-white collection of, whisper it – 19 years ago – are unavoidable. So does it feel like 1990 again and that major fashion moment which signalled the dawn of New Age spirituality, when PR guru Lynne Franks hosted a legendary all-white party, and everyone wore white Levi’s with Gucci loafers? Sort of. White is the colour equivalent of a week at a spa: the ultimate clean sweep. It symbolises purity, spirituality, serenity, and we could all do with that. More significantly, designers are commercially conscious of producing ideas that will prompt us to buy. But what of the white moment? The beauty industry has less to worry about as its sales surge ahead. White cosmetics cast a flattering light onto the skin, so should prove their must-have value. Come spring, we’

ll all be looking for light at the end of the tunnel.

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