Inside Showpony’s Strange, Beautiful World

The backbone of fashion isn’t necessarily the output itself, but the creative minds that fuel it. Behind every image are relationships built over years: collaborators who understand each other’s references, know when to push and when to pull back, and eventually develop a visual language that can be understood almost telepathically. Perhaps no better example is Showpony, where Creative Director Evanie Frausto has turned his longtime work in hair into a fully realized fashion universe alongside many of the artists he came up with.

For its second season, titled The Delusion, Showpony turns that universe inside out—quite literally. Frausto began with the anatomy of a wig, looking past the finished fantasy to the knots, grids, lace, and construction underneath. From there, hair becomes part of the look both texturally and symbolically: silk is screen-printed to resemble strands, wool and mohair mimic its texture, while deadstock hair is heated, felted, and manipulated using techniques Frausto learned behind the chair.

Not too far into the Year of the Fire Horse, Showpony made its buzzy New York Fashion Week debut last February, introducing Frausto’s hairy universe with an almost serendipitous sense of timing. Fittingly, the show was closed by horse-masked DJ horsegiirL, while its cast of otherworldly characters established hair as something to be worn well beyond the head.

That proposition becomes more expansive and refined in the just-walked collection. The latest muse, Cobrah, appears among a wardrobe that pushes further into the possibilities of hair as wearable material, building a world of fantasy strand by strand. “There’s something about the weirdness and awkwardness of it that I really enjoy,” Frausto says. “I’ve always been an artist who likes to push boundaries.”

Frausto has been doing exactly that for years. Before Showpony, he built a career as a hairstylist and hair artist, creating transformative looks for performers including Sabrina Carpenter, Rosalía, and more. Those instincts to stretch beyond the head at Showpony—hair can shape a silhouette, inform a shoe, or transform into jewelry. “It’s really cool to see how my hairdressing background can add to a garment and an entire ensemble on a human body,” he says.

Color, too, takes on symbolic weight. Working with Pravana, Frausto developed a palette around red and blue: red as sacrifice, blue as cleansing water and renewal, and lunar shades as cycles. Frausto also looked to Diana Surprised, Jules Joseph Lefebvre’s 1879 painting encountered in Brazil. The depicted bathing woman further shaped his idea of the collection as a kind of ritualistic rebirth.

 

To fully realize the fantastical entities that occupy that world, Frausto turned to someone who already knows how his mind works: makeup artist Kali Kennedy. As longtime friends and collaborators, the duo have worked together across editorials, celebrity projects, and Petra Collins’ book Fairy Tales. At Showpony, however, that creative relationship takes on another form—rather than responding to someone else’s world, they are building one together.

Even with Frausto’s community in tow, Showpony has also meant entering unfamiliar territory. Moving into the role of creative director has required him to relinquish some of that expertise and embrace the vulnerability of leading with one’s ideas and intuition. “What I really like about Showpony is that I feel like, in a way, I’m a student of life again,” he says.

 

That shared instinct translated into a beauty look centered on birth, ritual, and transformation. The initial direction was skin that looked “in utero” or freshly born: glassy, wet, almost alien, but still visibly human underneath. Rather than erase texture, Kennedy emphasized it, skipping concealer and layering a luminous product over bare skin.

Even in the high-gloss world of fashion, incorporating texture brings an intentional layer of reality and humanism. “I think a common denominator between Evanie and me is that we both find beauty in imperfection,” Kennedy says. Frausto might leave a stray hair untouched within an otherwise sculpted style; Kennedy might leave part of the complexion unconcealed. “There’s something very beautiful about humanity and things being real,” Frausto adds. “Especially in the AI-driven world we live in today, I think it’s so refreshing to see something leaning into its imperfections and finding the beauty within that.”

Still, this is Showpony, and natural skin hardly means minimal makeup. Kennedy moved opalescent shades unpredictably across the face, like placing flashes of pink beneath an eye.

 

The alignment extends beyond color—light theory also plays part. Under bright light, the complexion appeared clean and luminous; in darker photographs, the opalescent pigments transformed the models into what Frausto affectionately describes as “glitter sparkle, baby alien” creatures.

And when the hair, makeup, and wearable art styled by Devin Hershey converge, the result is difficult to describe in purely visual terms. “You feel the magic pulsing through you,” Kennedy says. “It’s really special.” With this almost mythic energy permeating the air, Showpony’s strange universe comes alive.