Doja Cat, alien covered in 30,000 red Swarovski crystals at PFW

Haute Couture week began in Paris, and one of the most anticipated events was the Schiaparelli fashion show. So many stars flocked to applaud Daniel Roseberry's new creations, Chiara Ferragni in one of the last social outings before her debut at Sanremo 2023 to Kylie Jenner in a dress made special by a maxi lion's head worn as if it were a brooch on her shoulder, but the one who amazed most of all was Doja Cat. The artist showed up at the show with a definitely extravagant and sparkling total red outfit in which beauty and fashion worked together to ensure a wow effect, at once alienating and eccentric. A little bit alien, a little bit demon to stay in theme with the French brand's homage to Dante's Inferno, Doja wore a look, by Schiaparelli and chosen with the help of stylist Brett Alan Nelson, consisting of a silk bodice, a skirt covered in lacquered wood beads and a pair of matching red boots that simulated toes, all in fiery red. The real out-of-the-ordinary touch? The decorations on the skirt seemed to continue on the rapper's body, which was covered everywhere with red paint and crystals. 

Transforming Doja into a creature from hell was make-up artist Pat McGrath who posted on Instagram the making of the look, giving us a peek at the long work done by her and her team that took almost 5 hours, attaching with painstaking patience, one by one, 30 thousand Swarosvski crystals on the singer's face and body after the bodypaint.

"It was a real pleasure to work with the stunning DojaCat and the incredible Daniel Roseberry on the 'Doja's Inferno' look for Schiaparelli's Haute Couture FW23 collection. Doja's sublime patience during the 4 hours and 58 minutes it took to create the look, covered in over 30,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals, was inspiring. The end result was a magical and mesmerizing masterpiece of sparkling brilliance."

Wrote McGrath, renaming the result "Doja's Inferno," an homage to "the essence of haute couture with shimmering, sublime sparkle."

The most obvious inspiration behind Doja's aesthetic choice is undoubtedly the same as that of Schiaparelli's fashion show and that is the work of Dante Alighieri, but it also reminded many of a famous photo shoot taken by Guy Bourdin for the December 1969 issue of Vogue France. For the occasion, the famous photographer had asked make-up artist Serge Lutes to entirely cover the models, Louise Despointes and Suzanne, with small black pearls. Fulfilling the request took Lutens over 18 hours and required 120 tubes of glue, 50 kilograms of beads, and endless patience on the part of both the makeup artist and the two girls. The long work was not the only drawback of this aesthetic choice. No one, in fact, had realized that with the epidermis entirely covered with glue and beads, temperature regulation and oxygen exchange are altered. The models thus began to feel ill, blacking out, and the editor decided to stop the photo shoot. As the assistants hastily removed the pearls and glue, Bourdin apparently exclaimed something like Bourdin said, "Oh, it would be beautiful to have them dead in bed!" and took the picture that ended up on the cover of Vogue with the models immortalized in bed. Fortunately, no such incident happened to Doja Cat and Pat McGrath, who was also responsible for doing the models' makeup on the Schiaparelli runway using a mixture of Divine Skin: Rose 001 The Essence, Skin Fetish: Sublime Perfection on some, while the new Love Collection FetishEyes: Liquid Eye Shadow in Platinum Bronze on others.