.
Dual Colours – A Trend That Sticks
Fashion forecasters say that a trend goes through three stages. Fringe, the phase where it’s novel, inventive and only the top trendy people or companies are taking part in it. When the trend then moves in to the stage of trendy, awareness is built and fashion-forward companies and retailers dare to enter the arena. Then comes the mainstream – the public join, the visibility of the trend increases and after a while in the spotlight, micro trends are born out of it; countertrends, backlashes, twists or reinventions.
The two last mentioned are particularly true with the dual hair colour trend; dip-dying, bi-colouring, bleaching, washed out colours… It has been seen throughout the last seasons in various combinations, with the ombré trend (dark roots with light ends) being one of the larger ones to hit the mainstream. Colours come in cycles, and the repetitions in colour popularity and preferences are the machinery of boredom; the market gets tired, so new colours are introduced. It’s a phenomena that works the same in fashion as for hair colours. Just when you thought this bi-coloured trend was starting to get tired, large fashion houses like Prada and Jean Paul Gaultier brought it back to the catwalk for Fall/Winter 2012, with a twist.
The models walking the runway in Milan and Paris have been compared to virtual dolls being the ‘avatars of fashion’s digital age’. Leyla, a colour technician at Toni&Guy in Stockholm, confirms that the trend is taking a slightly more powerful and futuristic turn during fall.
“Absolutely! If you take a look at the Jean Paul Gaultier and Prada shows, you will see the same colour pallet but with a slightly different approach where Gaultier used colour spray in the roots, creating a quite powerful colour statement”. When asked why she thinks this particular trend keeps on reappearing the response was: “Because it works! The trend for hair colours is still that it shouldn’t look too ‘alone’ and this is a colour style that doesn’t get a re-growth. Also, it keeps on coming back in different modes. Last season it was more pink and yellow and at the moment it’s more red and blue. The techniques vary as well; now we’re using a lot of extensions and colour spray that washes right off”.
The fashion weeks in Milan and Paris showed that the trend is growing stronger and coming back for the fall, but it’s not withdrawing for summer either. The creative team at Toni&Guy writes in their trend report that one of the biggest trendsfor SS 2012 is the stretch roots and dip-dyed colours, taking us back to the 90’s and 70’s, before progressing into the fall trends. Summer earth tones will be replaced by less low-key colours like eccentric orange, cobalt blue and icy whites. When talking about the trend working both ways for men and women, Leyla explained us: “There are not that many men that can carry so many colours, but the ones who can; go all in! We will be playing with full bleach, silver tones”.
Fringe, trendy or mainstream, this style has been reinvented, swivelled around and gone through the evolution of a trend more than once. The runway inspiration allows the interpreter to play whole new vibrant colour game and it will be intriguing to see how far one tendency can take a whole trend.
