All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
“What camp taste responds to is ‘instant character,’” says Susan Sontag in “Notes on ‘Camp,’” the seminal 1964 essay that spurred The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s forthcoming spring 2019 exhibition.
Bearing this conviction in mind, a metamorphosis dripping in artifice was practically a prerequisite for Vogue’s #CottonCampy-themed pre-Met party hosted by Sally Singer. Held at The Stonewall Inn, the iconic LGBTQ institution and enduring safe haven for radical individuality and self-expression, partygoers dazzled, with each attendee’s gauzy getup more astonishing than the next. Standing out? That was a tall—teetering on impossible—order. But with a little outlandish zhooshing above the neck courtesy of makeup artist Fara Homidi and veritable wig master Evanie Frausto, model muses Dara, Paloma Elsesser, Hannah Ferguson, Aweng Chuol, and Lila Nova were rendered practically unrecognizable in the hours leading up to the saccharine soirée.
In 1972’s Cabaret, Liza Minnelli portrayed Sally Bowles, a figure whose beauty uniform was a poignant symbol of camp escapism. Shapeshifting into a modern-era Bowles, Dara donned a black bob punctuated with a hyper-pronounced widow’s peak above razor-thin brows, a swath of multicolor diamanté gems encasing her gaze (Homidi’s nod to the Swarovski lids makeup legend Kevyn Aucoin once gave Cher, she says). In the case of all-American girl Ferguson, it was all about reimagining her bombshell beauty with an off-her-rocker ’80s attitude: deliberately smudged eyeliner, unapologetically overly lined lips, and teased-up-to-there tresses. Similarly subverting sexpot smolder, Elsesser brought the heat with a fluorescent green crop, chocolate shadow, and magenta mouth like a new age “’90s Versace girl,” says Homidi.
For Chuol’s chameleonic shift, Frausto crafted a Marilyn Monroe–inspired platinum wig with immaculately coiffed waves, while Homidi painted a veil of holographic glitter all over her chiseled features, upping the megawattage on her old-school movie-star radiance. And bedecked in a puff-sleeved Lou Dallas minidress and bow-emblazoned tights, Nova was a latter-day Marie Antoinette with a powdered porcelain complexion, liberal strokes of rouge on the cheeks, and a bright red pout. And then there was her commanding pièce de résistance—that towering and tightly coiled lavender pouf. As Frausto points out: “The wigs are always the cherry on top of the look!”
From disco ball shine to gravity-defying hair, these five catwalkers shed all vestiges of restraint and took their beauty to the max. The unspoken rule of camp is: Go big or go home. Don’t forget it.
“Crystals match everything,” insists Homidi. “They’re the ultimate conversation starter!” Underneath a white plume hat and curvilinear black bob, boundary-breaking Dara channels Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles in 1972’s Cabaret.
No Vaseline-on-the-camera-lens trick necessary for Chuol’s celestial glow. The South Sudanese stunner serves up screen-siren glamour with a modern twist. “It’s Old Hollywood, but with high-definition sparkle,” says Homidi.
Texan-born bombshell Ferguson transforms into an ’80s-era Vanna White—gone bad. “She’s all done up and sexy, but she’s had a rough night,” laughs Frausto, who busted out the teasing comb and maximum-hold hair spray.
Sizzling in a slime-green wig, Los Angeles–bred Elsesser has her mind on her money and her money on her mind. “Camp is about transformation,” explains Frausto, who learned how to perfect his craft and “make it work on a budget” from the drag community.
Nova can have her cake and eat it too. “She’s the past and the future,” insists Frausto, who saturated the Australian model’s 18th-century trompe l’oeil coiffure in a synthetic candy-color shade. But even she can’t be saved from the exquisite horror of a messy, smudged lipstick.
Director: Alana O’Herlihy
Fashion editor: Alexandra Gurvitch
DP: Kevin Hayden
Set design: Jesse Kaufmann
Hair: Evanie Frausto; makeup: Fara Homidi; manicure: Mei Kawajiri
AC: Yuya Kudo; B Cam: Paula Armas Fernandes, Yasmine Jansen
Gaffer: Rachel Kessler; grip: Jason Acton; editor: Savanna Fair
Visual director: Emily Rosser
Visual editors: Olivia Horner, Thomas Wolfe
Production manager: Maleana Davis