The Greatest VMA Beauty Moments of All Time: From Kurt Cobain’s Blonde to Britney’s Abs

Amid a sea of red carpets that revolve around the glamour of a pitch-perfect blowout and a well-executed cat eye floats the MTV Video Music Awards, a beacon of quirk and nonconformity, offering celebrities an occasion to let their hair down—or tie it up, as the case may be—in a youthful celebration of music and pop culture. Who could forget Madonna’s revolutionary 1984 performance of “Like a Virgin” at the network’s inaugural event, inspiring a generation of bedheads, brushed-up brows, gleaming décolleté, and irreverence? Ever since, the looks have ranged from familial grunge—Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love attended the 1993 ceremony with daughter Frances Bean in tow, each embracing their own shade of shoulder-grazing platinum and a pop of red—to romantic. The mid-nineties found alternative songstresses Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette embracing Botticelli-worthy waves, Apple’s tied back in a half-up style that pulled focus to her ironically angelic features—ones that she employed later to not so sweetly call out the absurdity of pop idolatry while accepting her moon man. Meanwhile, Morissette’s middle part, slightly weighted lengths, and lightly lined eyes were the very picture of the decade’s rocker insouciance.

Concurrently, there grew an unofficial exposed midriff dress code, spurring everyone from TLC to Jennifer Lopez, the Spice Girls, Shakira, Miley Cyrus, and Gwen Stefani to expose their famously sculpted abs—Stefani pairing hers with an equally engaging look above the neck. She knotted up her cotton candy blue bob and decked out her brow in light-catching bindis. It was a tactic repeated in 1999, when the red carpet saw a lot of Lil’ Kim, who supplemented her lack of clothing with an impressive wig of shiny lilac and an era-appropriate plum lip. In 2001 Britney Spears found all the balance necessary for her well-oiled legs and six-pack in a handful of glitter tattoos and one albino python.

In fact, the red carpet and onstage rebellions have been so iconoclastic that attendees continue to pay homage to the trailblazers that came before, Miley Cyrus re-creating Stefani’s aforementioned top knots, Katy Perry honoring Britney and Justin’s all-denim moment—Perry’s dress made modern by a cat eye and full-faced bangs—and One Direction expanding on ‘NSYNC’s many uses for hair gel.

Beyoncé used the iconic platform to announce her pregnancy, unbuttoning her sparkly jacket and jovially embracing her baby belly while her honey-coated, sideswept mane blew behind her. And though we all remember Kanye’s infamous onstage interruption, we should have been paying attention to his intricate buzz cut—after all, Taylor Swift is no worse for the wear. The singer took to the red carpet last year in a Mary Katrantzou romper that marked the beginning of an endless array of leggy displays. Before stars set out to shock and delight at tonight’s awards show, here, a look back at the best VMA beauty moments of all time.

The post The Greatest VMA Beauty Moments of All Time: From Kurt Cobain’s Blonde to Britney’s Abs appeared first on Vogue.