Models sporting real-world cuts and natural curls on the spring runways, no flatirons or hair extensions in sight.
The year 1995 brought us the end of Full House and the launch of eBay; the Dow hit a new high, and on the catwalk, as hairstylist Jimmy Paul remembers, runway hair started looking very…specific. Which is to say, all the models at any given show had the exact same hairstyle: texture, color, cut—everything matched. Designers stopped emphasizing the exuberant individuality of supermodels—Linda Evangelista prancing with her platinum crop, Cindy Crawford with her beachy waves. "All of a sudden, all the girls had matching hair because there was such a thing as extensions," Paul says. That's not to say that fashion shows haven't featured cookie-cutter hair and makeup in the past: In 1903, at what is considered to be America's first runway show, the NYC emporium Ehrich Brothers featured models in matching Gibson Girl updos.
Starting in the mid-'90s, beauty uniformity became the standard. Malleability replaced individuality: Instead of requesting the quirky crops that launched the careers of Twiggy and Evangelista, agents sent new models to get what model Brooklyn Decker dubbed the "blank-canvas cut": chameleonlike layers that could easily be transformed into a multitude of styles. If you had curly hair, you got it chemically straightened; if you had bangs, you were told to grow them out.
Fast-forward to the spring 2016 shows, when designers from Michael Kors to Donatella Versace stopped forcing a single look onto every model and instead sent them out with their natural styles in place. "There's a new idea of casting a show," says hairstylist Guido Palau. "The designers want the girls to very much be themselves; that's why you saw natural texture and haircuts." Fortunately for hairstylists, this makes their job easier: At Gucci, stylist Paul Hanlon had models prep their own hair by washing it the night before and then sleeping on it while still damp. Backstage, he skipped blow-dryers and brushes. "If a girl's got a certain movement, the minute you run a brush through her hair, you take away what's beautiful about it," Hanlon says. Dryers "change hair, make it more regular, which is against the whole thing of individuality."
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