Behind the Rainbow Hair Takeover at Seoul Fashion Week

From the specks of gold glitter on lids at Kye to clusters of freckles dotted on darkly at Cres. E Dim., the imaginative beauty proposals at Seoul Fashion Week have put us in a playful mood. A more compelling statement, however, has woven its way through the shows, one that points to a larger, high-impact trend: the rise of the rainbow hair girl, which has previously been slow to take hold in the Korean capital.

It’s a noteworthy shift in a city that has a traditionally gravitated toward collective beauty trends—a particular shade of widely embraced reddish-brown hair color, for instance—over individualistic, out-of-the-box hair and makeup ideas. The phenomenon first took root about two years ago, when, on a whim, It-girl Irene Kim decided to dye her bleached ends blue. “It was right before Seoul Fashion Week, and my agency was like, ‘Oh, my God, now you’re going to have no jobs, no one’s going to want you to walk,’ ” she recalls of the moment. That season, she was cast in about 18 shows—the most of any model.

Kim’s buoyant hair sparked a small revolution, and the Technicolor girls taking over the runways this season indicate a more open-minded and personal approach to beauty here, one that celebrates a unique spirit of self-expression. At Sunday’s Pushbutton show, dropped in among the lineup of dark-haired girls, there was Ahreum Ahn with her perpetually tousled dirty pink lengths and Suim Jang, who dipped her bleach blonde locks in the palest blue dye. When new model Lee Ji Hye appeared with a bright orange buzz, closing the show in a flowing lilac gown, guests in the front row (this writer included) were visibly moved.

For Kim, it has been a thrilling change of pace. “It really shows that the designers want to book the girls for their personality, not just to be a mannequin on the runway,” she said. And this cultural shift can be seen on the streets, as well, with pastel streaks and neon fringe spotted on smiling girls outside the shows.

“I like that the models get to have more of an identity by changing their hair color. It makes it more fun,” Kim adds. Or, put another way: “Rainbows make everyone happy—so why not!”

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