5 Bright And Beautiful Backstage Moments We Caught At The Marques' Almeida Show

One last hurrah for London Fashion Week AW16

Marques Almeida AW16
Marques Almeida AW16
(Image credit: James Gourley/REX/Shutterstock)

One last hurrah for London Fashion Week AW16

One of London Fashion Week’s coolest tickets, today’s Marques Almeida show was all about real girls (hurrah!) as the designers recruited friends and fans of the label to work their new season wares alongside the professional models.

Here’s what happened when we went backstage before the show…

We Saw A Gaggle Of Street-Cast Beauties So half of the model line-up were professionals, half were simply girls with great style, plucked off the street or found on their Facebook. Cool, right? ‘You’re going to see our friends, clients, girls around us cast in the show, rather than models, which felt quite limiting before,’ designer Marta Marques said. ‘What would she wear and how would she wear that? It’s actually a big challenge to create realistic and interesting clothes.

The Collection Was A Smash-Grab In Said Girl’s Floordrobe The styling, here, was everything. Layering slip dresses over shirts, frays teamed with ruffles, streetwear over eveningwear – the look was a fash clash that these seriously cool girls can pull off.

The Beauty Look Contains ALL The Colours ‘It’s a real rainbow season,’ MAC’s director of make-up artistry, Terry Barber, told us before the show. ‘The Marques’ Almeida girl is so East London, she doesn’t want to be perfect, she’s just getting home from her DJ gig and she looks undone. We’ve done a really sharp techno eyeliner, using Chromagraphic pencil, but then pressing pigment on top to pump up the colour to neon. The colours are custard yellow and 70s turquoise – it’s a sick psychedelia.’

There’s A Woman Inside This Duvet Coat Can you spot her? The coats of the season are e-normous and backstage we were snuggling right up to these dreamy puffers.

The Shoes Are Fluffed Up And Fabulous Marques’ mules are lined with big bird-worthy faux fur, taking the trend for fluffy footwear to a whole new, psychedelic level.