For Diane von Furstenberg’s first runway show since 2017, presented during New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2027, Estée Lauder partnered with the house and makeup artist Emi Kaneko. Beyond technique, five backstage faces express a single idea: there is no one DVF woman.
A show that marks a fresh start
The Spring/Summer 2027 show is no ordinary one for the house of Diane von Furstenberg: it is the first since 2017, and it marks Henry Zankov’s debut as creative director. In this relaunch, the choice of makeup is anything but incidental. Estée Lauder, in charge of the backstage beauty looks, entrusted the makeup direction to Emi Kaneko, whose approach was to reject the idea of a single face to embody the brand.
“They are all fabulous women gathered at the same party,” sums up Emi Kaneko. “There is no one DVF woman, and no one DVF face. The woman Henry imagined can be glamorous, eccentric, sensual, assertive, natural or incredibly sophisticated. What unites them is their confidence and their presence.” Makeup thus becomes a narrative tool in its own right, meant to introduce each character rather than smooth every face toward a common aesthetic.
Five faces, five stories
The cast of looks illustrates this declared diversity. The first, named Angelica, features a glossy blue smoky eye with cobalt and navy reflections, paired with terracotta-pink cheeks warmed by a touch of light and a softly blurred burgundy-brown lip: a look that seems to arrive straight from an evening out without ever appearing fixed. At the opposite end, the Diane look evokes sun-kissed skin and naturally flushed cheeks after a summer holiday, with a soft eye blurred in pink and beige and a fresh, glossy lip — the sunniest version in the cast.
The third face, Mina, opts for a velvety matte complexion that lets freckles and the natural texture of the skin show through, enhanced by an intense brown-plum eye and a lip sublimated with a maple-syrup-colored gloss. Next comes Virna, the coolest and most sophisticated proposal of the group: a matte complexion with no pronounced glow, a taupe-grey eye blurred with restraint, a satin-finish nude pink-mauve lip, with no bronzer or contouring. Finally, the Farida look closes the series with an almost opposite gesture: bare skin without foundation, lashes simply curled without mascara, cheeks left free of any blush, for a fully colored, glossy lip that concentrates, on its own, all the intensity of the face.
Makeup as a staging of confidence
Across these five propositions, a common aim emerges: to give each woman a distinct allure and personality, without ever seeking to erase her individuality in favor of a single aesthetic signature. It is a way for Estée Lauder to accompany the relaunch of a house by betting not on the uniformity of a beauty style, but on its capacity to let several embodiments of the same energy coexist.
What makeup says about a new chapter
This choice of multiplicity perhaps says more about Henry Zankov’s intent than any comment on style could: to take back the reins of a house dormant for nearly a decade by refusing, from the outset, to reduce it to a single silhouette. Here, makeup does not simply accompany the garment — it announces, by implication, how the house intends to tell its story anew.
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