This story originally appeared in i-D’s The New Wave Issue, no. 373, Fall/Winter 2023. Order your copy here.
Jawara Wauchope has just come from the Peter Do show, and he’s looking ahead to an afternoon and evening of more backstage chaos. We’re slap-bang in the middle of Paris Fashion Week, one of the busiest times of year for the i-D Senior Beauty Editor at Large, one of the busiest times for the industry itself. But despite this, and despite the fact that when we speak over Zoom, Jawara is coming off the back of a travel marathon, he has an air of being cool and collected in the eye of the storm that is fashion month.
“I feel like I’m understanding life a bit more,” he offers by way of explaining his zen attitude. “I’m leaning into life experiences, as opposed to going to things by the book or making a plan for certain things before they happen. I’m leaning into just actually feeling the moment of things, how things feel to me and how they make other people feel through my work.”
To be fair, at this stage in his career Jawara is an expert at navigating and blurring the boundaries and expectations of hair and beauty – but he has never accepted the traditional delineations between beauty and fashion. While studying Fashion Merchandising at FIT, he was also at beauty school, graduating from the Aveda Institute. It sounds exhausting just to think about it, but Jawara – who grew up balancing his time between New York City, south London and Jamaica – doesn’t see it as a burden, but as an opportunity. A platform to grow. “I’m excited by newness”, he explains. “I’m excited by opportunity.”
“Beauty, for me, is expressive. Beauty, for me, is open. Beauty, for me, is limitless. It can really be a world of escapism, of difference. It means a lot of different things to me, and I think it should never be placed in a box in any way.”
“Beauty, for me, is expressive. Beauty, for me, is open. Beauty, for me, is limitless.” Jawara
Another way of looking at that limitless attitude to life is to say that Jawara Wauchope is someone who knows how to spin many plates. Which makes sense, because this shoot, created with twin brother photography duo Jalan and Jibril Durimel, is inspired by the excitement, colour, movement and controlled chaos of a trip to the circus. “We thought about a few things, but there’s something that stuck out to me about this whole idea of people getting ready for a circus, which is a very obscure thing,” says Jawara, who first collaborated with “the Durimel boys” back in 2018. “It was such a particular point of view that I thought could have these subtle nods to beauty. We’re shooting a fashion story here, but paying attention to beauty, and asking: what does that look like when that particular thing is happening?”
The answer to that question is colourful, joyful, beautiful. Sure, these women could be getting ready to go to the Big Top as excited spectators, but they could just as easily be the stars of the circus themselves. In some shots they look almost meditative, the image of an athlete or a stunt performer getting into the zone before dropping into shark-infested pools or dangling acrobatically from the rafters. The resulting images, seen in these pages, are full of sunlight and shadow, of a playfulness in hair and makeup that’s signature to Jawara’s practice. “I’m always trying to find different ways to shoot beauty as opposed to just a portrait where you can easily see the hair or makeup. Insane, cool pictures as opposed to sitting beauty.”
The ability to see beauty in movement, light and performance is one baked into Jawara’s DNA, quite literally. The hair and makeup artist grew up in a family of artists: many of his relatives were musical entertainers or performers themselves. He first decided to go into the fashion industry as a child when he ended up being dragged onto the set of a video shoot for 5 Magazine by his mom. Amazed by the lights and the energy of the experience, Jawara fell in love. Without knowing what he wanted to do specifically, he decided to be a part of it, somehow, in some way. “I think one of the things that stuck out to me about this shoot was that I’ve got to be around people who would adorn themselves and be getting ready for performance,” he says, in between reminiscing about that pivotal moment. “If you’re getting ready for a big event, that process before the event is a very important thing. That’s where people can be in tune with who they are, and take care of themselves and express themselves through beauty.”
Beauty, for Jawara, is all in the observation: in watching how people dress, how they hold themselves, and how they channel their self-expression in hair, makeup and clothes, he finds inspiration for his own work. While he might use old films, art galleries and magazines as moodboard fodder, it’s people, and the everyday quotidian humanity of real life, off-runway beauty, that’s at the heart of his practice.
“As creatives you kind of pour yourself into everything”, he says as he prepares to head off to another hectic afternoon schedule of backstage madness. “So you have to leave a little bit of a cup full. You have to learn to feed yourself and find out what happiness is to you. But for me, happiness is really in doing what I do. I really do love it. So you know, it’s amazing in that sense.” A moment of meditative reflection amongst the circus, and then he’s off again.
Credits
Photography Durimel
Fashion Emilie Kareh
Hair Jawara at Art Partner using Dyson and Oribe
Makeup Yadim at Art Partner
Photography Assistance Alex Johnstone
Photography Intern Selah McHail
Nail Technician Honey at Exposure using Zoya Nail Polish
Set Design Julia Wagner at Second Name
Fashion Assistance Brittney Aceves, Sofia Amaral and Noa Villarin
Hair Assistance Sondrea Demry, Roddi Walters and Yeye Egunjobi
Set Design Assistance Madeleine Peacock, Dylan Hayes, Julien Passajou and Marcs Goldberg
Production AREA1202
Casting Director Samuel Ellis Scheinman for DMCASTING
Casting Assistance Brendan Conteras for DMCASTING
Models Brenda Mutoni at Muse, Momi Boog at APM and Celestia Seyvant