How do we define beauty? Martine Rose asks about the SS25 Show

Known for making surprise appearances on the fashion week calendar, Martine Rose made her first appearance in Milan, presenting her SS25 collection during men’s week. However, this season, the born beauty raises a matter that many persons are searching for a solution to. How do we define beauty? And what makes yet another beautiful than one other? According to Martine, the answer lies in the “cracks and fissures of culture”: from the extraordinary to the invisible and unpredictable.

“The spring-summer 2025 collection is dedicated to manifestations of beauty born of anxiety, humor and sex,” we read in the program notes. ​​Across the collection of 34 styles, attention was drawn to maximalist nails decorated with puffy crystals and checks, floor-length black wigs and prosthetic noses. Designed to “give a confrontational appearance,” the long, unkempt hair and, after all, the false noses reminded us of the distinctiveness and exclusion of Black people in beauty.

WITH over 44,000 nose surgeries performed in the USA in 2022 (greater than twice as many as 20.7 thousand in Italy this 12 months), rhinoplasty is commonly modeled after a Eurocentric nose. “The very first thing you see on people is commonly their nose. “It’s often the first thing they change about themselves.” she says . Presenting show notes in the city described as a “traditional platform for mainstream beauty exploration”, the British designer decided to counter this with wide, taped noses (which go against the traditional “ski slope” nose standard), complemented by a “hard wig, soft life” hairstyle “.

Behind the messy, tangled hair was a hairstylist Gary Gill (who was also answerable for Fendi and Hérmes) and a colorist Tasha Spencer, tying up her disheveled braids and lifting her thin fringe into the air. From the nose to hair and nails, “body-modifying items challenge conventional notions of beauty, character and anonymity,” Rose wrote, questioning beauty standards and the way they exist in the first place. So between the partitions of the Porta Romana and the seats covered with recycled sheets, tense “untried and interesting evolutions of beauty” could emerge.