The Next Big Hair Accessory Trend Is Using Anything *But* a Hair Accessory

Few fashion trends have been as pervasive or widely adapted as the hair accessory. Over the past four or five years in particular, designers have piled their models’ heads high with bows, ribbons, headbands, barrettes, banana and claw clips, scrunchies, you name it. Off the runways, showgoers have also embraced hair accessories with a similar enthusiasm, and they remain a ubiquitous staple of street-style galleries, season after season. 

But looking ahead to Fall 2024, it seems we’re entering a new phase of our collective hair accessory obsession. If the looks we’re seeing on the New York runways are any indication, clips, bows and barrettes are apparently out; adorning one’s hair with seemingly anything but an actual hair accessory, it seems, is in. After all, who needs scrunchies or headbands to accent a look when you can use gold leaf, a number-two pencil or — in arguably the most inventive case — actual hair instead?

Our first glimpse at this phenomenon came before New York Fashion Week officially began, at Christian Siriano‘s runway show last Thursday. To accompany the designer’s glamorous Fall 2024 collection, hairstylist Lacy Redway (for TreSemmé and Dyson) created futuristic gilded buns decorated with actual gold leaf.

“It’s kind of an alternative to a hair accessory or to wearing jewelry,” Redway told Fashionista in a backstage interview. “It’s an update to an accessory, and it’s really interesting to have gold in your part. We ignore our parts all the time…so I just really wanted to highlight that.”

The hairstylist used TreSemmé Mega Control Hair Gel as a type of hair “glue,” dabbing it along models’ center parts and on their square-shaped buns before adhering the gold leaf to it and finishing with TreSemmé Keratin Smooth Silky Shine Hair Spray.

Redway’s impulse to accessorize her runway hair looks wasn’t limited to materials straight out of Versailles, though: Later in the week, at LaQuan Smith, she went far more accessible and nostalgic, sticking regular old number-two pencils through the “knotted boss” buns she dreamed up to accompany the designer’s runway full of sexy workwear.

“There’s a lot of suiting and tailoring in this collection, and for me it’s kind of like cosplay of someone that works at an office,” Redway said of the look, referencing that moment “when you’re at the office and you just want to get your hair out of your face and you quickly just throw a pencil in it.” 

But the wackiest (and most literal) reinterpretation of the non-hair-accessory hair accessory for Fall 2024 appeared on the Collina Strada runway, for which hairstylist Evanie Frausto (for Bumble and Bumble) crafted “tattoos” out of nothing other than hair itself. The pro dyed and cut pieces of wigs into an array of “muddy, washed-out pastel” colors and lengths, and then shaped them into fairy wings and stars (emblems of the brand) on the sides of models’ heads.

Again, the idea of hair gel as “glue” came into play; Frausto used Bumble and Bumble Bb. Gel to create a “lacquered base,” and then topped it with a heavy mist of the brand’s Strong Finish Hairspray to seal it in place and lend a high-shine finish.

“I think it’s really sick and unique. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen somebody do that before,” said Frausto of the concept backstage. “The initial inspiration was actually just kind of painted on the head, but at the hair test, I was like, ‘Oh, whoa, what if we do it out of hair?’ We wanted it to feel very sharp and have these sharp points. It feels a little bit like metal, a little punk. And I also think it’s a take on the whole logomania thing, but in a very Collina way.”

Keep scrolling to see more of the anything-but-a-hair-accessory trend on the Fall 2024 runways.

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Source: Fashionista.com