Guido (Redken): I wanted to depersonalize the girls, completely. We designed some visors so the look is very futuristic. When I work with Sarah [Burton], I get involved really early on—she shows me the clothes, and we talk about it. She likes that I kind of toughen the girls up, because the clothes are always super beautiful, but I always feel like the McQueen woman should be very strong…and kind of anonymous, in a way. The clothes have so much personality that the girls’ anonymity makes the whole thing kind of cooler and stronger. I’ve tried doing the whole precise, couture hairdo, and it’s too elegant. I wanted that kind of Manga feeling this time. So we came up with this idea of the visors. I was looking at Japanese cartoons and then these kind of speed racers, and I thought, ‘How do I get rid of the hair? How do I make them hairless?’ So then we came up with these wigs, and actually, you have no idea how hard it is to get thirty-five identical wigs. But having all their hairlines the same, and all the hair the same color, really takes their personalities away. The hair’s been cut, and then we’re using Forceful 23 to make them almost into helmets. There’s no reality to the wigs; you don’t feel any sexuality, nothing. They’re really cold, in a way. It’s very ‘modern couture’. I don’t want to fall into that couture-type thing…sometimes when you start dressing the hair, even if it’s perfectly done, it kind of gets a couture element to it, and you don’t want to send the clothes out that way. There’s that great film from the 60’s called Village of the Damned where all the children have that white kind of hair, very icy…black could feel too gothic or heavy, whereas here with the coolness of the hair and the skin tone, it seems lighter and more futuristic.

Peter Philips: There’s not much makeup, actually, because all the girls are wearing these mirrored visors. So it’s all about alabaster skin—using full coverage foundation with a matte finish. I’m doing it a little bit paler than their skin tone. We wanted to keep the look very simple because the garments are almost like haute couture, and with the craftsmanship—the feathers, the lace—a naked girl is actually perfect. It makes the look a bit alien, almost, and at the same time, makes it a bit more luxurious.