Why we love the bouffant

The bouffant is back!

The hairstyle, known for its round shape, with hair swept from the face and peeled in place with a little hairspray, is symbolic of everything that is retro. Think of Catherine Deneuve, Betty Draper in Mad Men and several first ladies (Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Jacqueline Kennedy).

But the bouffant has made some notable fashion appearances in the past month. Bella Hadid had one at the Marc Jacobs salon in February. She wore a fitted black dress and white gloves, and her hair, styled by Guido Palau, reminded Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate.

Kaia Gerber received a similar hairstyle in a Loewe publication presenting her women’s clothing in spring 2020, with hair sculpted in place by Simone Mason while posing in a dress on the grounds of the Isamu Noguchi garden of peace in Paris. For the February cover of Self Service magazine, blonde model Rebecca Longendyke has Duffy’s hair styled with a single name with a few variations: wavy, messy, even short.

The current CR Fashion Book with Kim Kardashian West, Naomi Campbell and Cher on alternative covers has the trio masquerading as a biker gang in long brown bouffins with bangs.

The inspiration was the 1960s and Priscilla Presley, said Serena Radaelli, who made hair dear. Dear said, Excuse me, I was alive then and showed us pictures of her in the 60s.

Big hair is fearless in a way, said Radaelli. The modernity of this shoot was the length of the hair. It didn’t really take that long.

The bouffant’s unspoken message has always been that it was a big interview.

They were this glaring symbol that you were a lady of the leisure class, right? said Town & Country editor Stellene Volandes. They said: Yes, I have time to go to Kenneth and spend the afternoon there and make him tease my hair and eat William Poll sandwiches.

She was referring to hairdresser Kenneth Battelle, who was a master of the bouffant. Marilyn Monroe and Kennedy were clients.

Volandes has declared that she will send the curious about the bouffant to stylists who know their way in a clientele of upscale neighborhoods: John Barrett, Valery Joseph, Julien Farel or Serge Normant or at the Paul Paul Podluckys salon on New Yorks East 67th Street for true likelihood of the Upper East Side. In short, her rich lady hair, perfect for showing off jewelry. Hadid at Marc Jacobs was draped in diamonds. Or think of Kennedy at the State Shah of Iran dinner with a sunburst brooch from London jeweler Wartski in his hair. Rachel Tashjian, 30, a stylist at GQ, who occasionally wears her own platinum blonde hair in a puffy baby, said the bouffant looks both backwards and forwards. He returns to the visual culture and trends of the 60s and 70s and also takes note of bourgeois ideas around a woman of leisure.

There is a real emerging interest in the performance of dressing like an unemployed woman, the way in which dressing has been described in the memoirs of Diana Vreelands, she said. Vreeland, editor-in-chief of Vogue in the 1960s, wore her jet-black hair drawn across her face in, yes, a bouffant, perhaps better to show off her signature red blush. Yet what the bouffant also conveys is the way we invest time on ourselves right now. There is an interest in thoroughness and self-preservation and the ritual around taking care of yourself, and this extends to skin care and care and the way we dress, said Tashjian. If you’re spending money on Botox, putty, or any other treatment for beautiful skin, you want people to see it, so this renewed idea of ​​scratching facial hair makes sense. Volandes agreed that the meaning of the bouffant has changed. Now they seem to be more a sign of lenient challenge, she said. I’m going to take the time out of my crazy schedule, and my self-care is going to be to sit in a chair and have someone give me big hair, and I want everyone to see it! If you are curious about trying to make a bouffant to make yourself, Radaelli has advice. Having a good comb to tease the hair, maybe you need a hairpiece and lots of hairspray, she said.

She recommended LOral Paris Elnett Satin Hairspray, which arrived on the market in the 1960s. Its gold packaging always has a drawing of a lady with a bouffant. Illeisha Lussiano, a stylist owner of The Way, a salon in Manhattan’s Chinatown, noted that the bouffant was not strictly a white look. Diana Ross and the Supremes and really a lot of Motown women wore them, she says. The contemporary touch may not be just how they are styled or what clothes they are associated with, but the wearer himself. In January, designer Nicholas Daley sent male models onto the runway in London with curly, swept, almost mule-like outlets on a bouffant.

Men in a bouffant feel good, said Lussiano. I would really like to see Harry Styles in one.

2020 The New York Times