[Image: Makeup Artists / Facebook]
For his Fall-Winter 2025 show at Paris Fashion Week, Dutch designer Duran Lantink continued to break the mold with his offbeat designs featuring eye-catching styles, zany animal prints and butt-revealing jeans.
But it was the incorporation of prosthetics into his designs that set tongues wagging. First was a chiseled six-pack sported by model Mica Argañaraz, then came the big showstopper: Chandler Frye, an emerging male model, wore a pair of big, bouncing breasts.
While social media argued over whether the prosthetics “championed gender-fluidity or ridiculed femininity”, Lantink simply said that he was only toying with the idea of humans as dolls. “I love the idea of women as action figures,” the designer wrote in the show’s notes.
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But the use of prosthetics in fashion is not a new phenomenon, and for a while now, we’ve seen unusual and sometimes otherworldly looks on the red carpet.
In recent seasons, fashion brands including Martine Rose, Collina Strada and Balenciaga have used implants, masks and 3D makeup techniques to transform models into animals, aliens and cyborgs. Most memorably, Stockholm-based fashion label Avavav, known for its madcap latex creations, made a wearable replica of Kim Kardashian’s backside out of silicone.
Tanya Noor, a course leader of the Hair, Makeup and Prosthetics for Performance undergraduate program at London College of Fashion, told CNN, “Designers are using prosthetics to challenge beauty norms and explore transformation and identity, creating a broader cultural narrative.”
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It could just be for attention as well. Malina Stearns, a special effects makeup artist, has been busy on the red carpet in recent years, producing Doja Cat’s look at the 2023 Met Gala, where the pop star embodied Karl Lagerfeld’s beloved cat with facial prosthetics. Stearns has also worked with musicians on other creations, including the alien that featured in Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 VMAs performance.
While materials such as latex are still industry standard when it comes to prosthetics, 3D scanning and printing is allowing for even more complex creations. And fashion, increasingly taking cues from the world of entertainment, is now raiding its props department.
Perhaps one of the better-known prosthetic artists is drag queen Alexis Stone, who regularly attends Paris Fashion Week as a different celebrity doppelganger each season. Most recently, he’s been donning Adele for Balenciaga.
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It’s open season on props as makeup artists go all out to turn models into elfin-eared creatures for Burberry, extraterrestrials for Paco Rabanne, and animals for Collina Strada.
“The (Spring-Summer 2023) show was about breaking down the artificial barriers we put up between ourselves and the planet. So, the idea of transforming models into these hybrid human-animals just felt right.”
Makeup artist Stearne reckons the “plastic surgery look is always popular and people want to enhance (their appearance),” but the rise of prosthetics in fashion may have more to do with “art than cosmetics.”
“Fashion has always been about identity play, but prosthetics take it to another level. They let us completely rewrite the human form – why stop at styling clothes when you can style bodies?”
[Source: CNN]
