Fashion designers are covering models’ eyes at a trend-worthy tempo. But they’re also covering their own.
Headwear is having a moment and I am here for it. But collection after collection of the Fall 2024 Couture shows, and even in some Ready-to-Wear (I’m looking at you, Marc Jacobs), I kept seeing designers covering their models’ eyes. Obscuring their vision.
The Jean Paul Gaultier case is a take on the Y2K office siren. Nicolas Di Felice chose to open the brand’s Fall/Winter 2024 Couture show with six looks where the models’ faces are veiled: five up to their eyebrows and one look covering up to the nose. The collection as a whole seemed to play into the siren part of the trend, featuring sleek draped looks, sharp cutouts, and right-angle accent lines. And while most of the looks did not offer any facial cloaking, Di Felice closed the show with a beautiful beige sheer gown and a matching gauzy veil covering the model’s head.
Then, the Internet let out a collective gasp upon seeing the Robert Wu show. A glamorous, artful collection, the opening look is a blend between a bride and a widow, a sparkling look that lives somewhere between dreams and nightmares. Every look in this collection obscures the model’s eyes, either partially or fully. From wide rimmed dramatic hats to gauzy veils to playful masks and hairstyles, no model stepped on that runway with their head unadorned, or their view unobstructed.
Another gorgeously artful — and yet still veiled — collection was Rahul Mishra Fall 2024 Couture. While the headgear on most of these looks was more subdued than in previous examples, a few sculptural pieces created a screen-like effect between the models’ faces and the world in front of them, like the viral three-headed effect head piece gown or the abstract, sculptural outlining gown, overlaid high above the model’s shoulders and head.
At the Balenciaga show, Demna included gigantic, lampshade-like hats that seemed to channel the textures of outerwear. Like a puffer jacket, or a feathery coat, but in absurd hat form. These hats, often with fabric hanging off the brim, only leave the models’ chins and lips visible, if at all. The collection moves from the hats to a few looks that include butterfly masks, through which the models’ eyes are fully covered. This, plus a few shaggy haircuts and a couple of very thin dark bands worn like sunglasses, make up the Demna variant of covering the eyes.
On the Schiaparelli runway, the cover-ups were more subtle, with tight translucent veils tied around the models’ faces for some of the looks. The veils varied in color, from navy to teal to peach tones. The effect created by this styling choice is one of blurring the models’ faces, placing a barrier between them and the world.
And then the Marc Jacobs case. Although Ready-to-Wear and not Couture, his collection carried on the trend in an equally mystifying way. Perhaps his most playful collection in decades, the cartoonish feminine shapes were praised for their play on the stereotypes of traditional femininity and the tradwife trend. All of the looks included colorful oversized eye-lid-shaped masks with long dark lashes at the bottom, covering the eyes.
These collections come to us in a moment where political uncertainty fills the air. From the surprise left-wing win in France to the heated electoral climate in the United States, the zeitgeist is tense. Are designers telling us that in order to enjoy beauty and art and fashion we must cover our eyes and pretend like the outside world isn’t a mess?
Engaging with our creativity — and with arts that are deemed superficial by patriarchal paradigms, especially in moments of political unrest — can seem incompatible with being an engaged member of the culture. This incompatibility can lead us to believe that if we want to make or wear fashion, or listen to pop music, or whatever other superfluous act may be, then we must disengage from what is complex and complicated. But should we look away, hide our eyes, and pretend we do not see the problems? Or should we use our art to engage with them?
The answer probably lies somewhere in between, in the nuance, and not in the black-and-white approach.
The uncertainty germinated by political unrest has perhaps bled into all spheres, with growing concern that, in spaces like fashion, designers are reduced to puppets, losing their creative control. The critique that major houses are playing “musical chairs” with their designers, moving them from one house to the next but always keeping the same players in the game, is not really new (I remember hearing about it back in 2019) but has been growing in frequency. When Alessandro Michele dropped a surprise Valentino collection for Resort 2025, a common sentiment was that it looked too much like his era of Gucci. This is not to say that the clothes or the looks were bad, but for many, they weren’t different enough.
As a writer, I partly understand: how do you keep your own voice while aligning with the editorial history and goals of a specific institution, the one you happen to currently work for? Perhaps, feeling that they are losing themselves to the industry, designers want to look away. Subconsciously, the choice to create exaggerated headwear that prevents clear vision might be a reflection of this fear.
But while renowned designers opt for covering up, I suggest we at least ask them why — and do what we can to remove the veils we may have unconsciously opted to wear. 🌀
Laura Rocha-Rueda is a Colombian fashion and fiction writer based in Brooklyn who holds a Creative Writing MFA from The New School. She is your local Swiftie and will gladly chat about anything glittery and soft, and about why dismissing pop culture as frivolous is misguided and sad.
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