Defy gravity with spring's new upwardly mobile hair.
- Photography
Pagination
- 1
- 2
For spring 2009, upswept hair swept the runways. At 3.1 Phillip Lim, Odile Gilbert brought hair entirely off the face, parting it on one side and arranging it in a large chignon on the other. At Bottega Veneta, she did a centre part and formed curls to cover the ears. At Carolina Herrera, Orlando Pita rolled hair off the forehead in a sausage formation, recalling the safety-first style favoured by women who went to work in factories in the 1940s. At Marc Jacobs, Guido Palau used braids to yield the effect of a tidy head. At Prada, like Julien d’Ys at Yves Saint Laurent, he mixed the beehive and the French roll — two styles that demand the highest artistry in backcombing and bobby pins.
In fact, not since the early 1960s has there been such a call for the craft of the hairdresser. By 1968, when Vidal Sassoon chopped Mia Farrow’s locks for her role in Rosemary’s Baby, it was the cutters who mattered. After them came the colourists, who came to power in the 1970s, when crazy shades of burgundy, pink, blue and green presented them with new opportunities to flaunt their talent.
By the late 1970s, salons were offering mostly savage layers. Out on the streets, punk was promoting all kinds of odd barbering. Negligence ruled — and continued to rule. Spikes, having been permitted into the popular culture, morphed in time into tufts and sprigs erupting from tresses, quickly pulled into bunches with convenient — if crude — devices like scrunchies and banana clips.
More recently, Amy Winehouse has sampled the updoOccasionally, there were revivals of old-time styles. The women in the new wave band the B-52s wore their bouffant hair ratted and piled high. More recently, Amy Winehouse has sampled the updo. But except on Karen Walker, the horny lush on Will & Grace who often carried a mound of curls on top of her head, serious updos haven’t been seen much ’round here — that is, until vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin appeared on the scene. But it was only timing that made Palin — the most famous client of the Beehive Beauty Shop in Wasilla, Alaska — seem influential. The updo was already on an upswing. It was evident last winter, when fall collections were presented: Hair moved away from the neck to clear space for statement neckpieces.
