The rainy, moody backdrop that’s come to be expected from London Fashion Week only seems to have heightened the instinct for Day-Glo–inspired personal expression. On the runways, Matty Bovan’s new-school and Vivienne Westwood’s old-school punk visions both came to the same conclusion: A statement lip is the simplest way to mouth off. Bovan sent models out in madcap proportions and glossy pouts that faded from burgundy to fluorescent coral, while Westwood gave celebs like Rose McGowan a cherry-bomb shade for their poetic outcries on climate change. At the other end of the spectrum, ultra-femme collections nodded at the look, like Simone Rocha’s dark wine lipstick and Roksanda’s blurred red and apricot adaptations. On the streets, Phil Oh’s darlings took similar liberties, proving that style genres from neo-goth to modern artist share the same love for this classic beauty trope.
On her way to the Burberry show, Riccardo Tisci’s Brazilian-born muse Lea T paired a full-body caramel colorway with a coat of electric geranium lip color, while fashion editor Eva Geraldine Fontanelli pumped up candy-colored stripes with mod white sunglasses and strawberry lipstick—then doubled down with 10 matching high-gloss fingertips. Artist Dolores De La Rosa’s style doesn’t stay put for long (just this summer she assumed the identity Aaliyah Rosales), which made coordinating traffic cone–bright accents feel even more of-the-moment, from her choppy neon mullet to that tangerine contouring and flame-thrower lipstick. And it’s not just a fleeting attitude for Japanese fashion star Kozue Akimoto, who listed the ruby color applied by NARS global artistry director Sada Ito as one of her signatures, noting on her Instagram that “long black hair, cat-eye line and red lips are the essential elements of my style.” It’s not necessarily news to her half-million followers, thanks to a second style book, Kozue 2017-2018, that was released last year to mark her 30th birthday. Still, there’s something fresh about the streetwise mix of trenches, leisure suits, and even matching Batsheva dresses skipping over the British capital’s cobblestones with a collective appreciation for one of the oldest, and in some cases surprisingly subversive, tricks in the book.