Eugene Souleiman, KEVIN.MURPHY Pro Ambassador, translates The Imaginary Conversation into textured, romantic realism.
Twenty years after founding his London house, Erdem marked his anniversary with The Imaginary Conversation — a reflection on memory, imagination and the women who have shaped his world over two decades. Rather than looking back in nostalgia, AW26 explored continuity: a dialogue between past and present, muse and modernity.
Hair, directed by KEVIN.MURPHY’s Pro Ambassador Eugene Souleiman, became a quiet yet essential part of that dialogue. The approach rejected uniformity in favour of individuality — each model styled to feel like herself, not a version of someone else. Texture replaced polish. Movement replaced rigidity. The result was romantic yet grounded, wispy yet deliberate — a lived-in realism that allowed character to lead.
“The hair was really interesting, because the show itself was really about this idea of the imaginary conversation and thinking about all these muses from the last 20 years, cutting things up, mixing things together. And really, when we were trying to figure out the hair, which is such an important part of everything, we were kind of obsessed with the idea of every girl looking like an individual and really looking like herself,” says Erdem Moralıoğlu.
“[for the hair] there was this idea of something that felt like there’s a texture to it, something kind of romantic to it, a wispiness to it. But also, each girl was very much their own person, their own character. So, it was really about that sense of individuality and Eugene really played that in a beautiful way.” he continues.
Souleiman approached the hair as an extension of Erdem’s archival process.
“I absolutely loved the collection,” he says. “Erdem built it from his archive — cutting it up, repurposing it, turning classics upside down and stitching them back together in an unexpected way. I applied that same philosophy to the hair.”
With models of varying ages, textures and backgrounds, Souleiman resisted the idea of uniformity. Instead, he focused on enhancing what already existed.
“I loved the idea that every girl should look like herself,” he explains. “It wasn’t about imposing a look — it was about taking her natural texture and pushing it forward.”
Freshly washed, air-dried hair was lightly misted with water before KEVIN.MURPHY ANTI.GRAVITY was sprayed from a distance, allowing the product to settle gently onto the surface. The technique enhanced movement and lightness without visible styling — encouraging curls to expand, straight hair to sharpen, and pulled-back styles to feel effortless rather than constructed.
For selected looks, KEVIN.MURPHY POWDER.PUFF was diffused sparingly at the roots, creating a soft haze and subtle porosity — adding dimension without weight.
“It needed to feel real,” says Souleiman. “It didn’t feel like it was styled in front of a mirror. It was like hair that women could do themselves, that’s what we did. Because I thought the clothes were unreal and I felt like the hair needed to have this kind of reality to it that was real, but it also needed to have this otherworldly kind of quality that was more textural and more light. So really it was about us styling the hair with a very gentle hand, which is really quite nice because it didn’t feel cosmetic, it felt really cool and very personal, but at the same time it was stylized and there was an edge, which I think for me as a hairdresser, that’s probably the hardest thing to do. There was a real feeling behind it that was very personal.
The finishing touch was intentional imperfection. “I always like there to be something in the hair that isn’t too perfect,” he ends.
