Kobi Halperin SS27, A Common Thread
Makeup / hair designer and writer Astrid Kearney reports for ZOOT from Paris Fashion Week SS27, exploring backstage at Kobi Halperin’s A Common Thread. From the effortless hair looks and sheer makeup to the intricate details of the garnments, an intimate look at the beauty vision behind a collection celebrating culture and the art of connection.
This is all about “A Common Thread” by Kobi Halperin .
Jewellery Keren Wolf
Production Moda Production
Hair Lead Juan Lino using Kevin Murphy with Fashion Week Hair
Makeup Lead Michelle Webb at Laura Mclusky PR with Academy of Freelance Makeup
Report: Words & colour photos Astrid Kearney
Illustrations Farha Farooque
Backstage black & white photos courtesy Kobi Halperin
Kobi Halperin launched his own ready-to-wear label in 2015 and took the creative helm of French fashion house Emanuel Ungaro in 2021.
Some collections speak loudly. Kobi Halperin’s Spring offering at Paris Fashion Week preferred to converse. Titled A Common Thread, it picked up where his exploration of the Great Flood left off, turning to the Tower of Babel, that ancient tale of a single language shattered into many. Yet Halperin was less drawn to the fall than to what might follow. How do we rebuild, and find our way back to one another, without surrendering the very things that make us who we are?
The answer, he suggests, lies in clothing itself. Travels through India brought the idea into focus, revealing a place where tradition and modernity live side by side, and where what we wear can hold a sense of home. Garments become keepers of heritage, carrying our stories across borders and between cultures. In Halperin’s hands, fashion is a language of its own, one in which histories, symbols and influences speak to each other without a single word.
The collection opened, fittingly, with the suit, that universal code born of European tailoring. From there it unfolded slowly, growing richer and more surprising with every exit. Black lace gave way to sheer trousers flecked with gold; leopard print and textured tweed sat alongside fluid paisley; a blush satin halter caught the light like skin. A beaded, shell-shaped bra top glinted beneath open layers, while floating white pieces drifted through the salon like breath. Crystal chandelier earrings and jewelled chokers framed faces and throats. Nothing was erased along the way. Each tradition was allowed to enrich the other, so that by the finale the clothes felt less like a fusion and more like a dialogue.
Against deep, glowing skin, a beaded shell-shaped bra shimmered beneath open layers, otherworldly and quietly magical.
Astrid Kearney
The hair was effortless and free, shaped by each model’s own natural movement. Clean, unforced and quietly beautiful, it was left to fall as it wished. Some heads were then crowned with netted turbans studded with jewels, lending the line-up the air of modern goddesses. The adornment continued to the very ground: several models walked barefoot, toes and ankles dressed in jewellery, as though every part of the body deserved its own small ceremony.
Hair was left to breathe, unbound and luminous, falling exactly as nature intended, before some being crowned in veil -soft turbans, with jewels at it’s centre that turned models into a ethereal vision.
Astrid Kearney
The beauty followed the same gentle philosophy. Skin was kept lightweight and matte, prepped with an oil-free moisturiser for a soft, shine-free finish. Cheeks were left bare, lending the face a dusky calm. Colour came instead through a single YSL blush [shade], worked into a natural lip with the fingertips until it read as a stain, then pressed lightly onto the lids. [Korean product name] lent [its role]. One tone, carried from mouth to eye, became its own small common thread, colour that seemed imprinted rather than applied.
On lip and lid, colour bloomed as if from within, a single rosy tone pressed so softly into the skin it seemed not applied, but imprinted.
Astrid Kearney
What lingers is the collection’s quiet conviction: that unity does not depend on sameness. In a world more connected than ever, yet still learning to understand itself, Halperin offers a softer proposition. Our differences, he reminds us, may be the very threads that bind us together.
To boot…
KOBI HALPERIN
@kobihalperin I www.kobihalperin.com
ASTRID KEARNEY, makeup artist, creative & writer
www.astridkearney.com I @astridkearneymakeup
Read more from Astrid for ZOOT here.
