Harlem’s Fashion Row Kicked Off NYFW Celebrating Haitian Beauty – Essence

Courtesy of Mali Powell for ESSENCE

This week, Harlem’s Fashion Row (HFR) presented their 18th Annual Fashion Show and Style Awards on Wall Street. This year’s event, entitled This Is The Table, served over 40 dinner tables full of predominately Black editors, founders, and sponsors. They all gathered to celebrate honorees like esteemed Editor of the Year, Marie Claire’s Editor-in-Chief Nikki Ogunnaike and Usher, who accepted the Virgil Abloh Award.

But, the beautiful moments went beyond these well deserved awards and the powerful acceptance speeches that came with them. Following a performance by Alvin Ailey, and the awards segment itself, the evening transitioned into a series of three runway shows. All were coincidentally presented by Haitian designers—Waina Chancy, LaTouché, and Daveed Baptiste. Of course, each had a distinct take on Haitian beauty as well. “There’s three separate designers and there is a lot of different makeup looks,” lead makeup artist Keanda Vivar tells ESSENCE exclusively backstage.

The show started with Waina Chancy’s Atelier Ndigo which Vivar described, before breaking to tell her team to apply even more mascara, as “very natural with warm blush and lips.” Of course, this paired well with the groomed up brows. The eye-opening makeup also complemented low braided buns, which were dressed up with traditional headpieces fixated on the top of the models’s heads.

The second show, LaTouché, was inspired by Jacmel, Haiti. “It’s very tribal, avant garde makeup,” Vivar says of the red mask-like makeup that was painted on with LYS Beauty’s Foundation Sticks as the base. We saw the look on Haitian Love Island star, Chelley Bissainthe. She closed LaTouché in the vermillion tone with a brown lip from The Lip Bar and her hair braided into spirals.

In other looks, pearls and cowrie shells were braided into the models’s textures. “[LaTouché] wanted to create a tribal pattern with the shells as well,” says lead hairstylist Marie Simone. The artist and team cocktailed Amika products—like the Top Gloss Hair Shine Spray and Fluxus Hairspray—as they braided. “We’re doing high gloss looks with it.”

To close the evening, applause erupted for Daveed Baptiste, who channeled a Grenadian tradition called “Jab Jab” where the body is covered in a black tar-like oil as a symbol of defiance. Meanwhile, another model was painted blue.

Then, “for the pattern of the braids, we looked at pictures from African tribes and then recreated it,” Simone adds. For non-braided looks, “everybody wanted to go very natural.” For example, if a model had an afro, Simone used products to accentuate their curls. Those with locs received one coiled loc around another to create a more architectural look.

“I find that it’s very cultural, very innocent, fresh and authentic,” Simone says about this season of Harlem’s Fashion Row. “It’’s a part of history.”

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Touching Up the Jacmel Greens and Braided Feathers — LaTouché