Backstage beauty: Cecilie Bahnsen’s softly subversive textures in Paris made our hearts skip a beat

At Paris Fashion Week, Cecilie Bahnsen wore her heart on her sleeve... literally. Beneath her featherweight knits and silk plissé, small LED lights pulsed in rhythm with the collection’s title, 'Heartfelt'. Backstage at Palais de Tokyo, the same emotional energy played out in the beauty: intuitive, luminous and quietly offbeat.

“The hair this season had an individual flavour,” said lead hairstylist Cim Mahony. “There was a poetic synergy in the natural textures and movement.” Working across a cast of strong, distinct faces, Mahony and his team enhanced each model’s own texture before shaping it into slightly quirkier silhouettes.

Hair was prepped with Oribe products to build a base of subtle hold and shine, then refined using the Dyson Supersonic R. “It’s like a Swiss army knife of hair tools,” Mahony noted. The result? Soft ponytails, airy volume, and flyaways left to catch the light filtering through the fractured glass ceiling above the Palais de Tokyo. For makeup, artist Mel Arter crafted one distinct, unusually striking detail: tiny LED lights beneath the eyes with the battery pack tucked into the hair. The futuristic effect was a visual echo of the hearts beating beneath Bahnsen’s fabrics on the runway.

For a show about holding emotion close and letting creativity pulse just beneath the surface, Cecilie Bahnsen found its perfect backstage beauty match: lived-in, light-filled, and utterly sincere.