The backstage arena in Milan has, thus far, treated us to a profusion of sedate, virginal plays on the beauty theme of ‘natural.’ It was all starting to get a little er, vanilla. And then Emilio Pucci happened. 

‘It’s a bit Duran Duran or Madonna. Swept to one side, sexy, tousled,’ said hair demi-god and Kerastase’s creative artistic consultant, Luigi Murenu. If anyone can bring the sexy back, it’s him. And that he did. After prepping the hair with Kerastase Lift Vertige, he lightly tonged the lengths and flipped it over to one side. Sort of like that French-feeling, model-off-duty hair, but with a more extreme, wanton side parting. ‘Women look good with their hair tipped over to one side, it balances out the face,’ he said to a baying crowd of beauty press, each silently questioning their middle parting.

‘The hair is like when a woman is wearing a leather jacket and just turns to one side and does this,’ he said, fabulously demonstrating a side pose which could only be described as ‘jhooshing.’ 

Granted, there’s no Milanese smoky eye (in fact, it seems to have all but disappeared entirely from the beauty agenda for spring) or mountains of curls, but instead, we were treated to something so inherently sexy, the models seemed to go from girls this morning, to strong women by this afternoon. 

Lisa Butler, make-up artist for MAC did something never seen before with the girls’ skin. ‘We’re adding a drop of the darkest foundation into each model’s foundation shade so it looks dark rather than tanned or bronzed,’ she explained. ‘I’ve done it on shoots before but never for a show. It makes them look a bit grubby and moody.’ 

The effect was an army of women who looked like they could take you in a fight. While wearing six inch heels. Still, grubby? Grubby!?  Is this Milan’s answer to London’s ‘gritty?’ Possibly. Either way, we’ll take that over ‘natural.’

Click through the gallery above to see our exclusive backstage images from the show.