On the fashion front, messy hair is in style
Monday, May 29, 2006 6:57 AM PDT
By Hartford Courant
Printable version
E-mail this articleFair warning: If you tell your wife or girlfriend her hairdo appears a little askew, you obviously don't realize she might have spent some time getting it that way. Those wispy tendrils and spiky offshoots are not supposed to look like she forgot to secure all the hair in her ponytail or knot. That mussed-up look is intentional.
"People are spending a lot of time to make hair look messy. It's an elegant messy look," said Nelson Jimmo, owner of Nelson hair salon and spa in West Hartford, Conn. "It's not as easy as it looks."
Indeed, today's hottest hairstyles look particularly unstyled. And there's an art to that.
"It takes two hours to get it to look that sloppy," Richard Keogh, a stylist for Matrix, said of Uma Thurman's hairdo for the recent 78th Academy Awards. "She did it perfectly."
This hair trend doesn't have a specific name (we're calling it "harried hair" because it looks like the wearers are pressed for time), but you can see it everywhere. Go to any college campus, shopping mall, rock concert or restaurant, and you'll see women with artfully tousled hair -- sagging chignons, upended updos and picked-apart ponytails.
The fashion runways for spring/summer 2006 and this year's pre-Oscar red carpet events such as the Golden Globes were full of examples of perfectly imperfect hairstyles. Celebrities such as Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Kirsten Dunst and Poppy Montgomery are the new queens of harried hair.
"Casual elegance is a huge theme on the runways this season," noted Rodney Cutler, owner of Cutler/Redken Salon in New York. "The disheveled, messy look is all about taking an otherwise ordinary bun or pony tail and deconstructing it."
Why are we seeing harried hair? There are several reasons.
"As with many of today's hairstyle trends, we take our cues from fashion. This type of stylishly disheveled hairdo is currently in style because it reflects the fashions that are popular for this spring, not to mention multiple advertising campaigns this season," said Tim Rogers, spokesman for Charles Worthington London. "One example is Dolce & Gabbana's spring line -- the romantic, soft, whimsical and simple hair complements the fashions."
The runway rules, but a shift to the informal in pop culture also is a factor.
"You always have people who have a casual look; nobody wants to look too stiff and too done up. I think we have been seeing it for a long time, but now it is just coming to fruition," said Edward Tricomi, co-owner of the Warren Tricomi Salon in Greenwich, Conn. "Disheveled these days is very old-fashioned, like Elizabeth Taylor with one curl coming into her face or even Marilyn Monroe with a few tendrils. It looks best with somebody who has a lot of style and knows who they are. These people are able to put the hair, makeup and clothes together to create this look. It isn't just that they rolled out of bed to do it; they took time and energy, because they know what they want."
Harried hair is a manifestation of an unstructured culture, Keogh said.
"We're not structured. We're not stuck in one thing. We're in that kind of society, and the same thing goes for the hair," the Matrix stylist said. "Because we're in a corporate society and everything is so clean-cut, this hair is a subtle way of saying, `I'm still a little wild. I'm still here. I'm still groovy.' It's kind of a modern punk."
"Hair isn't about being straight, sleek and slick anymore," said Rogers of Charles Worthington London. "The slightly disheveled look brings a softness to the red-carpet wardrobe. Take Michelle Williams and Keira Knightley -- both of these women have perfected the slightly messy but still ultra-sexy and Hollywood glamorous look. Now, as an everyday look, I recommend monitoring the `messiness' you're trying to achieve. My advice is to stick to what's simple and what works with your hair and to only go with a style you're comfortable with."
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