The dish on the season's hottest look: Dirty hair
They say there are two types of girls in fashion: the clotheshorse and the beauty junkie. I definitely belong to the former category. I can spend hours trying on different outfits, just because: to have clothes on standby for a special occasion, a night out, a trip to the mall. I mentally go through what’s in my closet whenever I know I’ll be going somewhere. But when it comes to the rest of my look, I’d rather keep it low-key: hair up or down, minimal makeup and accessories. I just can’t be bothered, maybe because I’ve already spent so much energy figuring out what to wear.
My fashion icons are the quirky, mussed-up, carefree girls like Drew Barrymore, Marie Claire’s Taylor Tomasi-Hill and Margherita Missoni. They look put-together except for their hair, which they don’t take too seriously. Case in point: How many times have we seen Drew with stringy, “morning-after” waves? Or Margherita sporting free-flowing curls against couture? Save for the occasional red carpet moment where it’s the requisite to have the head-to-toe polished look, these girls are minimalists when it comes to their coif.
This season people have seemed to notice that dirty is cool, and actually very fashionable. Supermodels have been doing it for years, so it mustn’t be such a bad idea. How does one exactly achieve the “dirty” look? Well, it helps if you have long hair, with a bit of wave or curl to achieve the clumpy, stringy look without it falling flat. Skip shampooing for a day (or two) depending on how much you can stand it. With our tropical weather, oil gathers fast, making it quite uncomfortable if you’re used to the fresh feeling of a newly shampooed scalp. You can enhance the look by applying products like mousse, wax or hairspray. I found that working in product the day you wash it and adding some more the next, achieves the look and does whatever you want it to. Blogger Jane Aldridge of Sea of Shoes swears by it and frequently sports the dirty hair look on her blog. So does Kate Moss. The more oil and grease, the better the style will hold.
Dry shampoos to try: Osmo Day 2 Styler dry shampoo, Keratin Complex dry shampoo, Kevin Murphy dry cleaning spray, The All Nighter styling powder, Rene Furterer dry shampoo and Oscar Blandi dry shampoo The birth of dry shampoo is also a blessing for girls who want a fast fix. It’s a hair-cleansing agent in powder form, which you generously apply onto your roots to absorb oils and give texture so it’s basically “clean” again, without shampooing. Though it may not be available everywhere yet, some salons have been carrying it for a while. You can find Keratin Volumizing Dry Shampoo Lift Powder at the Jing Monis Salon and in December, UK brand Osmo will be launching their 2-Day Styler dry shampoo in Manila which will be available at various retailers. Jonathan dry shampoo has also been spotted at Watson’s. Sometimes, it takes some grease to have a great hair day.
