Ahead of next week’s kick off of the Haute Couture Spring 2016 shows, Khaoula Ghanem highlights some of the groundbreaking beauty moments from the Couture archives.
Before celebrities Katy Perry and Kylie Jenner popularized the Technicolor rainbow hair trend, and Instagram was bursting with color courtesy of grinning females sporting glow-in-the-dark manes, there was the Versace Fall 2002 Haute Couture show presented at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.
Donatella Versace sent a line up of models—that included Michelle Alves and Karolina Kurkova— down a neon-backlit runway with their pin-straight tresses flicked into a deep side part and splattered with all the colors of the rainbow: multidimensional streaks in electric blue, hot pink, lavender, and fluorescent green hues ran down the models’ manes, irradiating before a star-studded front row that included P. Diddy, Chloé Sevigny, and Paris Hilton.
Bright colors and sex appeal are to be expected, even demanded at Versace—the brunette models opted for hi-def shades to amp up the visibility, while the blonds went both high and low impact for a cool, upscale punkish appeal that coordinated with their body-molding leather jumpsuits and glossy oxblood pouts. For an added dose of rock star drama, a stripe of white eyeliner coated the models’ waterline, and was emphasized with a line of black kohl smudged on their bottom lids. A set of fluttery false lashes was meticulously applied to frame the peepers.
The strips of color that ran down the models’ hair at the couture extravaganza in 2002 ultimately made their way down our social media feeds and serve as a gentle reminder to the endless recycle of beauty fads in fashion; rainbow hair isn’t an emerging trend, it’s just making its colorful comeback.
