As London Fashion Week takes the capital by storm, it’s all go for the fashion and beauty industry, following a hectic awards season.
Hairstylist Anna Cofone, global creative advocate for the Gen Z-coveted hair brand Authentic Beauty Concept, is one of the brains behind some of fashion week’s biggest looks.
When she’s not styling global stars like Lana Del Rey or Margaret Qualley, Cofone works with designers on the ‘big four’ fashion week shows – across London, Paris, Milan and New York.
While there are a lot of similarities, working with high-end designers requires a change of tack from working with celebrities.
“There’s a lot of freedom to be honest,” says Cofone. “Obviously, everyone’s different, and each designer has their own vision, but there’s a lot of room for interpretation.”
Having worked with the Princess of Wales’ favourite designers, including Roksanda and Erdem, as well as Harry Styles’ go-to label, S.S. Daley, Cofone knows better than anyone how to merge high fashion with fun fads in the thick of a backstage environment.
Unlike celebrities that may all be emulating a certain trending style, each fashion week show requires radically different looks.
Take Chet Lo, one of the industry’s rising stars, known for his futuristic and hyper-textured designs. “He is, by far, probably one of the most organised of designers,” says Cofone.
“So I’ll get the deck with the full looks sometimes two, three weeks before the show, which is unheard of, and he’ll send me a mood board and say ‘this is what I’m feeling’.”
Chet Lo’s level of preparation allows Cofone to experiment, refining styles in the weeks leading up to a show. “I’ll just play for about a couple of weeks and then he’ll come down, I’ll show him what I’ve done, either on a model or on mannequin heads, and then we translate it.
“Once we’ve kind of adapted it, we actually do it on the hair test day, where there’s usually the makeup artist as well – that’s where it’s finalised.”
But not all designers provide such a clear creative direction. For David Koma, Cofone had to take a more instinctual approach.
“His inspiration was Pina Bausch – the dancer and choreographer. That’s all he said to me,” she recalls. “So I looked at his previous collections and tried to get a better feel for what the silhouettes were, because he hadn’t shared any images of the clothes.”
Through studying Bausch’s fluid movements, Cofone conceptualised a deconstructed ballet bun: slicked back in the front but falling apart in the back, combining sharp structure with an ethereal softness.
“There was this two-tone, two-texture thing going on,” she says, “slicked back but then really textural and quite soft in shape.”
Despite months of preparation, London Fashion Week is notorious for its last-minute challenges backstage – and hair and beauty is certainly not immune.
“At S.S. Daley, we were put into a room – I think the depth of it was, say, like a dinner table,” Cofone says.
“We had no power for the first hour. It was at the Royal Academy of Arts, and production hadn’t thought about the fact that you’ve got a team of 18 hairstylists all needing to use hair dryers and other heated tools,” she laughs.
At Roksanda, the models simply didn’t turn up on time – a common but challenging occurrence at fashion week shows.
“The models didn’t turn up for an hour and a half,” says Cofone, which forced her to rethink some of the pre-planned looks.
“So I’d say another skill is being adaptable and problem-solving. I’ve had ‘disasters’, but probably when I was a bit younger, like early on in my career.
“I guess that’s what age and longevity gives you – you can learn from the experiences.”
Age not only teaches you that you have to adapt to situations – but what products are truly worth the hype, and for Cofone, she’s settled on Authentic Beauty Concept (ABC).
Seeing growing demands for sustainable, vegan-friendly haircare, Cofone has observed a lot of these brands don’t offer the same power as synthetic old-school products, but ABC seemed to have bucked that trend.
When designer Di Petsa wanted mermaid hair on every model for her runway, Cofone had to work with a small budget: “I was like, OK well, there’s not going to be any time to do full heads of extensions,” so instead she focused on structure and shape rather than the amount of hair itself.
“The Amplify Conditioner, which has got this gel-like consistency, was perfect for prepping the hair,” says Cofone. For volume, “we really amped the texture and the volume with a mix of the Nude Powder Spray and the Airy Texture Spray to just kind of create this almost aerated shape that gave the appearance of fuller hair.”
London Fashion Week is as much about fulfilling a creative vision as it is about thinking on your feet, and for Cofone, the joy lies in the collaboration.
“It’s about bringing their vision to life,” she says. “That’s what makes it all worth it.”
