Backstage, three dozen makeup artists and hairstylists are at their stations, turning the models' faces into pale palettes with eyes streaked in a blue-gray teal. With their delicate angular faces, and strong brow ridges, they look like Cro-Magnons and fairies at the same time.
Tanya D. is one of them. Because she's a minor, she's allowed to work in eight or nine shows only, she says. "I'm choosing the best shows with beautiful clothes to present myself as a model,'' she says, which, considering her demographic, should be music to Moufarrige's ears. "The collection is fantastic and beautiful, every work he's done.''
Those who aren't dressed yet are goofing around the way teenagers do. Snejana Onopka and Maryna Linchuk are lying on the ground, in an out-of-the-way place, flipping through pictures on a digital camera, smiling.