Evanie Frausto’s SHOWPONY Turns Itself Inside Out

It all started with Evanie Frausto turning a wig inside out. The lace, seams and knots that are normally pressed against the head suddenly became the interesting part. For SHOWPONY’s second season, that reversal spread across the body: silk impersonated hair, mohair grew into strange new textures, ears and nails sprouted hairy jewelry, and materials collected from years of hairstyling were pulled from the studio and given another life. If last season asked what might happen when hair escaped the head, this one goes further, stripping some of it away altogether. What remains is exposed, strange and not always what it first looks like…

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF SUBMISSION BEAUTY @submission.beauty
CREATIVE DIRECTION EVANIE FRAUSTO @evaniefrausto
IMAGE DIRECTION DEVIN HERSHEY @devhershey
MAKEUP KENNEDY @kalikennedy @streetersagency
NAILS NAOMI YASUDA @naominailsnyc @forwardartists

For SS27, Evanie wanted to do the opposite of what he first proposed with his debut show. 

Last season, SHOWPONY put hair everywhere. It climbed off the head, wrapped itself around bodies and became the clothes. This time, Evanie found himself staring at the other side of a wig.

“I started visually imagining a wig being turned inside out and became really interested in all of those details we’re normally meant to hide - the lace, the way the hair is sewn in, the grids, the patterns, the seams.”

Those hidden mechanics made their way into the collection, but so did another idea: how little actual hair could SHOWPONY get away with? One of Evanie’s favorite developments of the season is a print. From a distance, it reads as hair. Up close, it’s silk, screen-printed with strands that aren’t there.

“We really wanted to push ourselves with the R&D this season, especially when it came to fabrication and texture,” he says. “The challenge was figuring out how we could stay within this hairy world we’ve created while introducing completely different fabrics and materials.”

It’s a pretty good trick for a brand called SHOWPONY. The further Evanie pushes into hair, the less actual hair seems to be the focal point? Hairiness is at the center of the show still, though: mohair took on the texture. Prints borrowed the look. Hairy earrings grew around ears. Elsewhere, hair grew to the chest and legs, exaggerating places where it already belongs but is so often removed.

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“A big part of it was creating an illusion - making you question whether something is actually hair or just behaving like hair. That sense of confusion and play became really important to the collection.”

Although, Evanie doesn’t seem particularly interested in clearing up the confusion.

“There’s this constant reversal happening: hair becomes clothing, while clothing and other materials start pretending to be hair,” he says. “I like that you’re not always completely sure where one ends and the other begins.”

The real hair that does appear - that comes with history.

For years, Evanie has saved what accumulated around him while working as a hairstylist: top notch hair sourced for jobs, pieces of material that had already done what they were bought to do. The leftovers stayed in his studio. Fashion and beauty make a lot of things for very short lives. A shoot ends. A model takes off the wig. The image exists, and everything used to make it can suddenly become excess. Evanie kept his.

“With every project, I’m sourcing incredible-quality hair, fabrics, and materials, and so much of it is traditionally used for one moment and then discarded,” he says. “I started thinking about how I could give those materials another life.
Sustainability has become really important to me - not necessarily as a limitation, but as another way of challenging myself creatively and reconsidering what we call waste.”

Some of that saved hair was heated, felted and worked into new forms. Other pieces barely needed hair at all. That tension became part of SS27, including what Evanie calls an “almost fashionable balding effect.”

“We wanted to explore this almost fashionable balding effect and intentionally tone down the amount of actual human hair on the garments. It feels like you’re stripping something away rather than continuously adding, and what’s left at the end feels more honest.”

There are bald spots. “Hair” made from silk. Real hair pretending to be clothes. The underside of a wig facing outward.

Close friend, collaborator and makeup artist Kennedy followed the same slightly misplaced logic for the faces.

“Evanie and I truly share the same vision when it comes to our craft. Finding beauty in the imperfection,” she says. She imagined an inside-out face as “something more cerebral and out of context. Almost glam extraterrestrial.”

As she explains the makeup for the show - skin carried most of the effect. Blush moved away from where it usually sits, highlights became lowlights, bronze climbed onto brow bones.

“There’s nonsense placement that somehow creates magic”

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"I think the way to have someone wear a look without it being distracting is to choose one element of the body to really “go off” on.  This time we chose skin, simple but when you turn it in a certain light you get this official illusion that sort of scrambles the brain." - Kennedy, key makeup

Evanie talks about the collection in terms of shedding, too. Asked who he imagines walking out of that process at the end of the show, he says, “I think the person walking out at the end is their most authentic self.”

When we ask what he is less interested in hiding now, his answer is simpler.

“Myself. I’ve grown up in an industry where everything can feel very overthought and over-considered, and I’ve spent a lot of time second-guessing myself and dealing with the anxiety that comes with that. With this collection, I’m trying to let go of some of that.”

“I feel like I’m coming out of this process more fearless, more willing to trust my instincts, and less concerned with hiding the imperfect parts of myself.”

@EVANIEFRAUSTO @SHOWPONY.NYC @KALIKENNEDY