A London Fashion Week star daubed neon-bright paint onto excited young faces, two top milliners wove flowers into garlands, and could-be designers repurposed newsprint as recycled couture—all in a day’s fun in the Wardrobe Department.
The neon face-painter would be Louise Gray, who installed her tipi and opened up shop to offer fluoro mini-makeovers to queues of mothers and daughters.
‘It’s all about this fun element that I’m trying to inspire into the kids,’ she said from inside her pop-up studio’s mirrored interior. ‘It seems to be working.’
Next door, Vicki Sarge-Beamon guided groups of girls as they created their own embellished festival bracelets Across the tent, milliners Piers Atikinson and Fred Butler trained hydrangea stems into ivy crowns as they made headdresses fit for a woodland nymph (or 800, the number of festivalgoers the two crowned their first day on duty).
‘What’s wonderful about these floral headdresses is that they are one-day wonders because they’re picked, real flowers,’ he says. ‘We’ve been really busy.’
Rubbish magazine editor Jenny Dyson welcomed gaggles of girls keen to style each other in folded-newsprint ruffs and gaffer-tape belts into the Rubbish Couture tent all weekend. The most enthusiastic creators celebrated their work at daily fashion shows, where girls from age 16 months to 16 years toddled or sauntered down a makeshift runway. David Sims was there to capture every flourish from his pop-up studio.
Those seeking sleeker looks headed to Bumble & Bumble’s demonstration tent, where professional stylists led masterclasses and offered makeovers through the weekend. Bumble & Bumble Editorial Stylist Neil Moodie taught braiding and updo classes, Bleach London’s Alex Brownsell sprayed pastel-hued stencils onto adventurous heads, and Stephen Jones and Moodie brought the hairstyles seen in portraits of Port Eliot ancestors to life with portraits and styling sessions.
After the last fashion show, when Gray put away her brushes and the stylists in the hair tent unplugged their tongs, the English roses of the Wardrobe Department drifted back into the general festival population, trailing glitter and petals back to the tents.
Read more about the Port Eliot Festival
See the most inspiring looks from the 2012 Port Eliot Festival
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