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.
In a post-apocalyptic world, humans have been forced to evolve, developing unique cosmetic defence mechanisms to survive the brutal terrain. From supersized lashes to extrasensory vision, your outer appearance now acts as your protection. Beauty is transformed into armour.
“I wanted to imagine what could happen to the face, body and skin and any mutations that we might build up as natural defence versus artificial beauty defences,” says make-up artist Georgina Graham on building the aesthetics for this post-apocalyptic universe. “I took ordinary beauty features such as freckles or hair and supersized them, created a pattern or shape and combined them with artifice such as contact lenses. I also paired extreme beauty gestures that mimicked an archaic view of hyper-femininity that people can present as a mask to protect themselves from the outside world.”
For photographer Till Janz, the shoot was about celebrating strong characters and the unique powers that are individual to each of us. “It is a journey we all will go through,” he says. “For us, as a team, it was important to respect each characters authenticity and add an element that plays with the idea of power without being too obvious.”
For the shoot, we brought together some of the most exciting young talent to be found in our community and beyond. These are people who are carving out their own path in the worlds of fashion, music, dance and art, unbeholden to the rules of beauty that dictate polite society they use hair and make-up as vehicles of self-expression in true Dazed Beauty fashion.
Ami Evelyn Hughes: I don’t really wear make-up but I like to take very good care of my skin and I drink collagen every morning, take vitamins E and C, and use glycolic acid as I have very dry skin. Beauty doesn’t mean that much to me, I like to focus on my work and my art, therefore I don’t have any spare time to focus on me.
What does magick mean to you?
Ami Evelyn Hughes: Magick has been my obsession since I was able to read and watch things. I have had some very dark and hard times and have instinctively turned to magick to resolve the issue or calm the situation – both times when I really needed it, it worked.
Photography Till Janz, styling Georgia Pendlebury, hair Jose Quijano, make-up Georgina Graham
Photography Till Janz, styling Georgia Pendlebury, hair Jose Quijano, make-up Georgina Graham
Photography Till Janz, styling Georgia Pendlebury, hair Jose Quijano, make-up Georgina Graham
Occupation: Writer, model, founder of Prosperitee Press publishing house and HIM + HIS, a 500-page creative anthology on men and mental health which has now grown into a community.
Location: Born in Cergy-Pontoise in the suburbs of Paris, grew up in South London. Mum is Eritrean and Dad is German.
What does beauty mean to you?
Hélène Selam Kleih: Beauty is being comfortable with ourselves – understanding that we can have flaws and struggle to come to terms with ourselves daily. It’s an up and down and even if we’re the listener, the giver, the carer, we need to give ourselves the time to recognise our pain. Beauty only comes after the pain.
What does magick mean to you?
Hélène Selam Kleih: Magick is Prosperitee – watching my loved ones, and anyone really, get through trials and defy the odds. Magick really is just getting up in the morning and deciding what you want out of your day.
Photography Till Janz, styling Georgia Pendlebury, hair Jose Quijano, make-up Georgina Graham
Photography Till Janz, styling Georgia Pendlebury, hair Jose Quijano, make-up Georgina Graham
Pedro Ferreira: Beauty and fire guns are quite the same to me, if they didn't exist the world would feel nicer. ‘Jokes’ aside, beauty might be either spending a long time in front of the mirror getting unpleasantly beautiful or spending none and getting the same result.
What does magick mean to you?
Pedro Ferreira: Magic to me is breaking out of repetition cycles.
Photography Till Janz, styling Georgia Pendlebury, make-up Georgina Graham at M+A using Mac products, hair Jose Quijano at The Wall Group using Amika, nails Sylvie MacMillan at M+A using Essie, retouching Postmen London, producer Saorla Houston, casting and production assistant Jessica Canje, make-up assistant Daniel Delgado and Eoin Whelan, nails assistant Simone Cummings, DOP Amelia Hazlerigg, focus puller Klim Jurevicius, lighting assistant & digital operator Teddy Park, runner Izzy Chapman, retouching Postmen London
