“With her wild red hair around her pale face, we are looking at a nymph from Pre-Raphaelite painting.” This is how H. W. Janson, one of the most influential art historians of the 20th century, describes the protagonist of the pictorial work The Lady of Shalott, by the Pre-Raphaelite John William Waterhouse, dating from 1888. There are many legends and urban myths surrounding the red-haired population since it is estimated that less than 1% of the world’s population possesses this saffron shade naturally, with a higher concentration in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Such is its exclusivity that, after years of being considered a stridency or a tone that eclipsed the beauty of any outfit and was only used for very specific looks, this season it has taken the reins of the most important haute couture shows.
Whether natural, colored or dyed, copper has been the tone chosen for the most special outfits, those that leave the imprint of a designer for a specific season. Rodarte wanted to present her dress with the most gothic-glam airs, another twist on the passion for horror films of the firm’s founders, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, with the model Madelyn Whitley wearing a loose mid-length hair and parting to the side. center in a burgundy “that almost looked like a glass of pinot noir tinged with purple,” writes Arden Fanning Andrews in The New York Times. However, Whitley described the tone in less romantic terms: “Dried blood.”
“We are talking about shades that go beyond natural coloration, although they are based on the idiosyncrasies of redheads and their association for centuries with mythology and with the impact of seeing such unusual hair and rejected for many years. That is why it is still surprising to see the images of Linda Evangelista, whom we know for having experienced all the blondes with her short hair, in vermilion parading for Prada in 1992. ”
“The same thing happens with Naomi Campbell dressed as Chanel in a photoshoot in New York from the same period and with red hair,” says sociologist and stylist Lindsay McCarthy, a professor at the prestigious Central Saint Martins fashion school in London and a collaborator punctual of another irreverent redhead, Vivienne Westwood, who also wore the most powerful orange in her curls for years. With her almost butane, several models of the English-trained Portuguese Marques’Almeida paraded in Porto and can be seen internationally in their fashion film, since they have many clients in the United Kingdom and the United States.
On the Burberry catwalk in the British capital, Dutch ballet dancer Toon Lobach sported a feathered turtleneck with his hair in an almost bouffant cut of an orange bordering on red hue that Grazia UK magazine described as looking like a fire engine. or a neon candy.
As usual, the British Simone Rocha also opted for this coloration, born of a small mutation some 50,000 years ago, to present her proposals on the same catwalk. “I always ask my team to find models like this, because my aesthetic moves a lot between baroque and punk and this color denotes the personality of these artistic and cultural movements. And if I am already looking for something that cannot be natural, like in my last show, which I wanted to be very provocative with more oversized clothes than usual for me and a more minimalist floral print, I ask the hairdressing team to achieve this 100% orange effect. for my models with whiter complexions”, the designer recounted after the parade this summer season.
Victoria Beckham went one step further and, in London, decided that this color trend would go beyond the scalp. Thus, the copper hair extensions that some of her models wore were also part of fringes on knitwear and even on high heels. Pictorial and sculptural art once again demonstrated its pairing with fashion design. Beckham pointed to the Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa as her source of inspiration.
For the Gucci show in Milan, hairstylist Ben Gregory dyed model Julia Belyakova’s natural blonde a fiery crimson, while in Paris, Chanel chose model Seoyeon Lee to wear a pink floral peplum dress with burgundy waves in her climbing hair and that Adwoa Aboah wore spirals in the purest ginger.
“Red hair makes you the center of attention, for better or worse,” says British Rachel Gibson, whose Instagram account @thehairhistorian collects pictures from different eras in which hair defines composition. “It was desirable in the Elizabethan era and in Italy after Titian,” he explains, referring to the Renaissance painter known for depicting women with auburn locks, “but otherwise it has been largely seen as an intruder due to its sparseness and negative historical connotations, from Judas and Mary Magdalene in some texts to a long list of vampires and other literary villains”, as an article in The New York Times highlights.
From the History of Art to cinematographic and television nostalgia. With the rise of the so-called Y2K fashion, teenagers are opting for this coloring. And, according to The Business of Fashion, herein lies the key to this bet on the catwalk: the search to attract a younger audience. In the 2000s, the redhead starred in blockbuster indie films like The Fifth Element and Run Lola Run, with his heroines wearing powerful crimsons, while on the small screen a teen Claire Danes won us over by transforming her personality with a box of Crimson Glow dye into the series It’s my life.
“You could get that color red in the drugstore, so there was a character on every teen show who was that shade in the 2000s. That’s influencing fashion now,” remarks Alex Brownsell, co-founder of Bleach London.
After years in which gradients triumphed, with even worn tones, such as Californian highlights, colors with a lot of pigment are the most in demand. “Now they wear primary colors with a lot of pigment, without contrasts, the warmest and most luminous. The Catalan model Julieta Gracia is our client and she has gone from brown to red. Other models that come to us have left blonde behind and demand this color at the request, we suppose, of the industry and because it is synonymous with a strong woman, with personality and sophistication”, explains Gloria Infantes, hairdresser at the exclusive Salón Toro in Barcelona and teacher at the School of Fashion Arts and Techniques (EATM).
Just remember that even in the 1940s and 1950s, when it was still shot in black and white, femme fatales like Rita Hayworth in Gilda had redheads.
We cannot ignore Venetian blonde in this catwalk trend, the lightest shade in the range for redheads, with a ginger base, but with blonde highlights inside. Its name is due precisely to the women who at that time of the Italian Renaissance smeared their hair with a mixture of saffron and lemon and exposed it to the sun. This was Dior’s hairdressing option in several of its looks for this spring/summer.
And from the catwalk to the parties of the main brands, where the shock effect that the creative directors of flagship brands do seek is avoided, but with dreamy results in the hands of the best salons. All we have to do is look at the gorgeous almost waist-length mane of singer Cardi B, who usually wears jet black, with a gorgeous warm red head that looks extremely natural with her brows to match, at Loewe events. Reddish: pure empowerment.
