Backstage at Erdem SS27: How skincare, make-up and hair brought the runway vision to life – TheIndustry.beauty

21 September 2026

For Erdem’s spring/summer 2027 show at London Fashion Week, SkinCeuticals, Merit and Kevin Murphy worked to a shared beauty brief that balanced fresh, visible skin with masculine accents and deliberately undone hair

Against the collection’s sequinned leotards and fine silks, SkinCeuticals led the skin preparation, Merit created the make-up and Kevin Murphy styled the hair, with the three backstage teams collaborating to bring the runway vision together

The collection took its cue from Barbette, the American aerialist who performed as a woman in 1920s Paris and removed his wig at the end of each act. Erdem Moralioglu told Vogue that the collection explored androgyny by layering “the most feminine of feminine underwear” with pieces that felt “very, very masculine”

That duality carried through the beauty direction. Skin was worked on for radiance rather than coverage, brows were brushed up and out, lashes were left bare and hair was windswept and deliberately deconstructed. TheIndustry.beauty spoke to the leads from each brand ahead of the show to find out how the looks came together

Facialist Hadda Akrim returned with SkinCeuticals for what the brand called Skin Prep 2.0, a shift from priming the surface to treating the skin itself so make-up sits better on top. Each model received an express lifting and sculpting protocol before going anywhere near a make-up chair

The treatment opened with Gentle Cleanser, followed by a lymphatic-opening massage and targeted pressure to release tension. A vitamin C serum came next, tailored to each model, with C E Ferulic used on drier skin and Silymarin CF on oilier complexions. P-Tiox Serum was then applied in slow, lifting strokes across the eye contour, nasolabial folds and forehead

The final step was the new P-Tiox Cream, launched by the brand this year and formulated with 10% Myrixin, peptides, niacinamide, LHA and Crystalide Micropeptide. Akrim pressed it into the skin rather than rubbing it in, allowing it to act as a lightweight primer while locking in the serum. A light application of A.G.E. Advanced Eye and a mist of Phyto Corrective Essence to calm redness finished the protocol, providing a reset for models arriving from early call times and travel.

“I don’t want a shine on the skin that just sits on the surface,” Akrim explained. “I want skin so well prepped that it has that subtle glow and smoothness all over. We achieve this with the combination of the P-Tiox Serum and Cream.”

The brand describes the result as the P-Tiox Glass Effect: skin that looks plumper and more refined, with light moving across it rather than sitting on the surface. The finish answered Moralioglu’s brief for an “incredibly fresh and luminous” complexion that would provide “a natural counterpoint to the more constructed elements of the collection”

Make-up artist Lynsey Alexander then built the face for Merit, which announced its limited-edition collaboration with Erdem, including bespoke packaging and new shades, ahead of the show. Several of those products made their runway debut backstage

With so much embellishment on the clothes, Alexander said the face needed to go the other way. “There’s lots of sequins, it’s really quite glamorous and high-octane,” she said. “So we really needed to pull back the make-up and make it a little bit more masculine.”

Brows carried the look. The brand’s Brow 1980 Volumizing Pomade was brushed up and out, then its Brow 1990 Sheer Gel Pencil filled and defined the shape. Lashes were left without mascara to maintain what Alexander described as a boyish quality, while lips stayed soft and neutral

The skin was kept sheer, with The Uniform used only where needed and Great Skin Serum adding sheen. “We want the skin to be, like, sweaty, almost a bit humid, like they’ve been performing,” Alexander said. “That’s the whole point.”

Day Glow Highlighting Balm in Tulle, a limited-edition shade created for the Merit x Erdem Winter Set, was applied over the eyelids and cheekbones for a slightly wet finish. Alexander also used it on the legs and body. “We’re kind of using this everywhere, on the legs, on the body, anywhere where there’s skin,” she said. “It has to look glowy.”

Moralioglu added: “The collection explores the push and pull between masculine and feminine and we wanted the makee-up to reflect that same tension. It feels androgynous and fresh.”

For cheeks, she reached for two lipsticks rather than a blush: Signature Lip Matte in Black Tie, part of the collaboration’s Signature Lip Trio, and Signature Lipstick in Bespoke. The colour was pressed low on the cheeks with a fan brush to avoid a concentrated flush on the apples. “Boy blush,” she described it. “If you think about on a cold day where a young boy would blush. I have a five-year-old boy, so I see this a lot. But it’s that lovely little kind of innocent blood coming to the surface.”

“We pressed the colour into the cheeks for a natural, slightly ruddy flush – as though the colour was coming from within the skin.”

The approach fit the brand’s positioning as much as the collection. “You actually see the model and not the make-up, and that’s what I love about Merit,” Alexander said. “It belongs on the face. It doesn’t look like make-up sitting on the face.”

Eugene Souleiman, Global Artistic Ambassador for Kevin Murphy, created two contrasting hairstyles from a mood board he said was “based on duality, masculine and feminine”. With a cast spanning curly, straight, short and afro textures, his team drew on the full Kevin Murphy range. “We’re literally using the whole range, because we’ve got the whole world here, under one roof,” he said

Models with shorter hair had HAIR.RESORT worked through the roots and combed to the side, then the polish was deliberately disrupted with a hairdryer. “If there is a byword for the look, it’s a kind of gentlewoman. There’s a sort of manly quality to the hair, and afterwards we’re literally just blasting it and breaking it up so it feels windswept and raw, but there’s still this chic kind of elegance to the hairstyle,” Souleiman explained.

Longer hair was centre-parted, with a fine section along the parting sprayed and tonged before being brushed out to merge with the model’s natural texture. The lengths were braided low into the nape, then POWDER.PUFF was worked into the braid to give a dry, matte finish before it was gently pulled apart. The aim, Souleiman said, was something “slightly deconstructed, but in a natural way”, as though the environment had loosened it rather than a stylist.

“Everything is juxtaposed,” said Souleiman. “The whole show is about duality in terms of gender. Erdem is incredibly nuanced, and you see that in the details of his collections, the fabrics and the embellishment.”

Souleiman said the hair direction was developed in step with Alexander’s make-up, and that the shared rawness across skin and hair was intentional. “Lynsey and me work really quite closely on this,” he noted. “That’s when a show really works, when everyone has the right chemistry. We play a supportive role in the show because, at the end of the day, I can put my ego aside and think, what’s the best thing to do? What’s going to work best with everything?”

The process started well before September. “I’ve been talking to Erdem about this since July, really,” Souleiman added. “We did a shoot together in July, and you start the cogs turning. It’s such a team effort from hair and make-up and styling, and everyone has an opinion. There’s no right or wrong, but it’s about building a vision for someone.”