What’s the GLOSS?
The buzz in glamour is wet, wet, wet. By Li Ying Lim.
When Mary-Kate Olsen casually strolled through Lower East Side Manhattan with wet, slicked-back locks in the middle of August, we were charmed. Not only because New Yorkers hardly hit the streets with damp hair – high-maintenance blow-dries have become de rigueur – but also because in her chic, all-black tailored ensemble, Olsen showed the world that you don’t need to be in Juicy Couture and leotards to justify the raw sexiness of a shiny wet mane.
As we cruise into Autumn/Winter ’13, the surfer-girl tress affair is having a real moment. But this is more screen sirens offstage, rather than Californian sunshine. Wasn’t it Karl Lagerfeld who famously said: “Too much sunshine dulls the mind?” The sun-drenched style of earlier fashion seasons has now come out looking more darkly glamorous and edgier, like a woman who has just picked up her coat and left the house to traipse by the Seine on a cold, rainy evening.
This edge was precisely what hair master Guido Palau had in mind when he created the look for Prada Autumn/Winter ’13. “This season was about a more womanly kind of Diesel Autumn/ Winter ’13 beauty – very cinematic, with references to film noir,” he says. Wet may have been key but there is a dynamic spirit in the look. On the Marc Jacobs runway, pixie crops gleamed sensuously under the spotlights but were not drenched like at Prada’s show.
Meanwhile, at Louis Vuitton, the girls strutted out with ’50s bobs and carelessly sheared bangs as though declaring a successful break from the iron throes of dispassionate bookers and film managers. “It’s inspired by a French girl on the Left Bank of Seine in Paris, who might have cut her own hair,” says Palau of the coiffure. “Designers wanted to capture moments in beauty, so I created hairstyles that looked caught in the moment, as if a woman was caught in the rain.”
However, this look is not just for the free spirits of Left Bank. At Sonia Rykiel, damp manes were given a shot of quirky French mod. It is all about insouciance, so practise that shrug, but don’t forget poise.