A splash of color for a new generation: the super-cool Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs The World.
Growing up watching Jem & The Holograms, as well as countless Japanese anime series, unnaturally coloured hair was always at the back of my mind. During the nineties and early 2000's, unnatural hair colours were still something regarded as very unusual and daring, mostly reserved for the alternative and underground types or as a sporadic resource to propel the visual impact of certain movie characters from plainly bad ass to truly iconic, like Lola from Run, Lola, Run and Leeloo from The Fifth Element.
Leeloo and her eye-catching atomic orange tresses.
Franka Potente's fiery red hair is as much a protagonist of the film as Lola herself.
As a teenager in her personal search for uniqueness and individuality, having an unusual hair color seemed like the logical next step for me. My own coloured hair odyssey started at age eighteen, just after finally breaking free from the constraints of High School uniforms and dress code and appearance regulations. There were already a few sources of crazy coloured hair inspiration for me―muses whose daring attitude seemed to be reflected by their crazy locks.Gwen Stefani during her candy pink hair period, at the height of No Doubt's musical success.
Kana Ichigo (known now as Moon Kana), J-rock singer and model; one of my greatest fashion inspirations!
Marimoon, internet celebrity now turned T.V. personality in Brazil, captivated audiences with her in-your-face bright red hair.
I found inspiration even in literary sources; in Las Dos Elenas (The Two Elenas), a short story by Carlos Fuentes, the main character is trying to embody everything that's cool and modern among the edgy intellectuals of the sixties. She attends special viewings of alternative films at Cineclubs, eats mexican food at quirky restaurants in the Bohemian district of the city, and drinks espressos while discussing polyamory with her artist friends. Elena is a beautiful and vibrant young woman, who wears black turtleneck sweaters paired with a black leather miniskirt and red tights, and is described as having green eyes and pale pink dyed hair.
I felt like that particular aesthetic represented what I was searching to project with my image. In my mind, unnatural coloured hair became the complement of an eccentric and radiant personality, a must-have trait for the bold and adventurous person that I aspired to become. Which color to choose as my signature? Due to my darker skin colour, I reckoned that candy pink and other bright colours would not suit me very well. Purple, though, had always been my favorite color and some of my favorite anime characters had purple hair:
Misato Katsuragi, intrepid chief of military ops from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Sailor Mars, from one of my favorite animes series, Sailor Moon, was portrayed as having very dark hair with purple highlights.
I decided, then, that purple/violet would be my signature hair color. I tried using L'Oreal Feria color in Purple Power, since it seemed to match the exact tone I wanted, but the results were barely visible on my hair―which only showed the slightest purple tinge under direct sunlight―and the violet tones quickly faded after a couple of washes giving way to a deep garnet tone, which although somewhat pretty, was definitely not what I was going for. Therefore, my first attempt at having purple hair yielded rather disappointing results.
Do not be fooled, it doesn't turn out like that at all!
Doing a good deal of internet research, I started to figure out how to achieve the colours that I wanted, and started bleaching my hair and experimenting with different brands and colours. I don't know why, but even though I had many different colourful hairstyles throughout the years, I never went for a full coloured head after the purple hair fiasco. I always dyed sections of my hair, but never the whole thing.
Twenty-one-year-old Violetta, with one of my many hair color combinations.
As my hair color evolution unfolded, I started noticing unnatural hair colours popping up in mainstream pop culture, and being featured more frequently in movies and T.V. series. Suddenly, we had colourful heroines gracing both the big and small screen on a more regular basis. As a dyed hair enthusiast, I have to admit that a movie featuring a character with a crazy hair color was immediately appealing to me. That criteria directed me to some gems like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (still one of my favorite films of all time); however, that's also how I ended up watching Ultraviolet at the cinema, a movie that is basically an 80-minute-long hair dye commercial without any further substance.
Clementine's (played by Kate Winslet) ever changing hair color in Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind.
Mila's hair was probably the only thing worth watching in Ultraviolet.
Outside of the cinema, the color craze was also spreading fast. Walking through the city, it was obvious that the brightly coloured hair enthusiasts were starting to gain terrain, going from a few odd ones to a fair number among the young people in only a few years. With the aid of the internet, there was a sudden explosion of colourful hairstyles and creative combinations, reaching their peak during the golden years of the Scene Kids style in the late 2000's.
Zui Suicide and Audrey Kitching, two of the most popular Scene Queens.
You know that a trend has definitely reached mainstream when even Mexican telenovelas pick up on them! Here is one of the characters of teenager soap-opera Rebelde.
After sometime, like all things subject to continuous exposure, unnatural hair colours lost their initial shock factor and a little bit of their impact as some sort of alternative trademark. Some punk spirits even felt offended at how the trend was now being embraced by the very ones that once sneered at them and ridiculed them for having crazy coloured hair.
These days, few people are shocked by the sight of a person sporting a green, blue or pink mane, and in some circles and circumstances, we could even say that unnatural hair colours―just the same as piercings and tattoos―have become acceptable to some extent and even trendy. Even the most mainstream pops stars and celebrities have sported unnaturally coloured hair at some point, and a touch of color here and there is seen just as another stage prop.
Has wild coloured hair lost its meaning, then, if it ever had one? Once the banner of the eccentric and rebellious, it has now become widely accessible and fashionable. Does this mean that we should mourn the dilution of its essence? I think not. If anything, people have become increasingly creative and many have adopted brightly coloured hair as yet another tool for self-expression. A quick browse through Tumblr or Pinterest will throw hundreds of the most amazing and whimsical coloured hairstyles, with almost every shade imaginable and countless combinations, becoming almost an art in itself.
What is the appeal of dying our hair in unnatural, bright colours, then? I believe that it makes us feel a bit more magical, somehow. Most of us feel a need to ascertain our individuality, to not only cultivate our minds but also adorn our bodies. The need of decorating our lives and ourselves to create an identity, to reach outside of what is within our normal, given set of circumstances and modify them is one of the things that make us human, after all.
Oh, and remember about my initial purple hair ambition? Well... ten years later, but hey, at least I finally did it!
Misato's purple hairstyle! At last!
Thanks for reading!