Charlie Le Mindu, SS26 Couture
Gallery / 27 images
It’s the last day of couture week in Paris, an hour before Charlie Le Mindu’s first fashion show in a decade, in the edgy, far-flung Oberkampf neighbourhood. The backstage is buzzing, and there is hair on every surface. It hangs from clothing racks, it’s on the bodies of the models, it sits on tables and it’s pinned to the walls. It’s being clipped, snipped, ironed and tweaked for Le Mindu’s first-ever haute couture show.
A decade ago, Le Mindu was a fixture at London Fashion Week for his hair-raising fashion shows. He then changed his career course to focus on costumes for opera and ballet, creating work for a few select clients like Doja Cat’s Coachella hair monsters or Chappell Roan in her “Subway” music video. His return collection to fashion week, dubbed Skins, is inspired by the couture techniques he has picked up over the past years. “We are very meticulous in what we do in terms of techniques in the fabrications,” he says. “I’ve been doing this for maybe 25 years now. So I’ve learned from mistakes… I also have a bit more budget than I used to. So everything seems much better.”
The show itself is an extravaganza where hair meets fashion, blurring the line between the two and challenging viewers to question where hair begins and fabric ends – or whether that boundary exists at all. There’s plenty of nudity (“I love it, we’re all born naked,” Le Mindu laughs), alongside sponsorship from Byredo and Pornhub, and a live performance choreographed by Grace Lyell, featuring nude dancers coated in clay, staged at the centre of the runway. “For me, it’s not about body positivity, because I don’t believe in body positivity,” he says. “I believe in body visibility. We need to be visible. Everyone needs to be visible, and I love people who agree to show themselves.”
The collection featured every kind of hair and texture one might imagine, reimagined as dresses, shawls, jackets and bikinis. There were chaps-style trousers, boots that came up to the top of the thighs and merkin-esque furry underwear. “I think hair is such a personal material because it’s our fur,” says Le Mindu. “We are hiding behind it, and we are covering ourselves; it makes us feel better… That’s why we have such a strong reaction when we go to the hair stylist, and we don’t like what they do.” Karin Westerlund was on make-up for the show, while Melissa Rouille did hair and Lora de Sousa was on nails.
Le Mindu sourced all the hair for the collection ethically, which was a unique process. “I have a dealer who gets people who are selling their hair because they want to,” he says. “They make sure that the people who are selling the ponytail make a good chunk of money to be able to live.” For this collection, he used Peruvian, North African, Eastern European and Asian hair.
Le Mindu and his team spattered Pravana dye with a toothbrush onto the hair and used a special implanting technique to secure all the hair to the fabrics. “I just feel like it’s more luxurious and it’s also the kind of work that we don’t see anymore, because machines are taking [over this work],” he says. The team he selected for the show are all classically trained in entirely handmaid, haute couture techniques – the highest standard of fashion.
“I don’t claim to be a fashion designer,” says Le Mindu. “It is just a craft that I love. I’m just doing an event, and people [can] take it as they want. But also, one reason I really like doing this is that I have lots of kids who will text me on Instagram and be like, ‘Oh, I’m so inspired.’ And it just makes them happy. I just want to show the industry that we can be a bit more fun, especially at this time, when everyone just wants to make money and do straight hair for the red carpet.” While you may not see anyone walking around in a full hair suit anytime soon, Le Mindu’s work is a reminder that fashion can still be playful, handmade and unapologetically fun.
