Welcome to Witch Week, a campaign dedicated to exploring how witchcraft, magick and beauty intersect. Discover photo stories shot featuring real witches in NYC, a modern reimagining of the witch, and one witch’s mission to get a tan, as well as in-depth features exploring herbology, science and alchemy, and male witches. Elsewhere, we’ve created four special covers to celebrate the campaign and our one year anniversary – something wicked this way comes.
“We focused on creating different variations of what we could call a modern witch, boundary-less versions of gender, beauty and style,” say photographer Etienne Saint-Denis and stylist Taylor Thoroski of their new magical shoot. “It’s interesting to us how you can feel something ethereal simply by gathering certain elements together or portraying a specific cast.”
Taking the stereotyped “ugly” aesthetic of witches as a starting point, the pair worked to detach their witches from this traditional narrative, drawing inspiration from everything from folklore to drag make-up to viral un-transformation videos, to offer a different, fresher perspective on the witch. “To us, one of the most magical things about make-up is that you can completely change someone's identity,” they say.
Photography Etienne Saint-Denis, styling Taylor Thoroski, make-up and hair Ashley Diabo @ TEAMM, models Amer @ FACES MGMT, Candy @ SYSTEM, Yang @ SYSTEM, Anastasia, Charlotte, Harry, stylist assistant Mehdi Bakhti, production assistant Samuel Houston, casting director Shahriyar Ghobadpour