Popping Collars at Proenza Schouler
Paul Hanlon and his team of Frédéric Fekkai stylists worked with Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough again this season to create the best “stringy” hair that you’ve ever seen in your life. This time, the challenge was to incorporate the black collars that the models wore during the show.
Paul thinks that the Proenza boys are genius (true), but Paul is pretty on top of it when it comes to the hair thing. “We’re making the hair stringy and scrawny. It’s not beautiful hair. It’s very unwashed and dirty. They were going to tuck the hair in the jackets, but then they said to me, what are we going to do when we don’t tuck it into the jackets? Then I saw that every girl was wearing these black collars. So when the girls come in we’re putting them on straight away they liked the idea that whatever the effect was it was done in a very natural way. We’re just wetting the hair down with water mushing it around very stringy and scrawny in the way. When they walk they still want it to feel loose.” we’re taking a little section underneath and putting a little hair band in and spraying it with a sheer hold. They didn’t want to put the hair inside. It felt too much like a gimick, like “Fashion! Oh, let’s put the hair inside the collar. Too obvious. I like the idea that maybe they had it on the day before and maybe they’ve just walked in and taken the collar off. It just makes it more like natural hair. The boys aesthetic is always quite real, but there’s always a little tension, a little weirdness to it.”
Us Nylon girls are much more interested in any new version of our favorite hairstyle: Bedhead. It seems like we finally found a hairstylist that gets that, so we asked him what his hair trend predictions are for spring ’13. “There’s a massive ’90s thing going on. I don’t know how many shows I’ve seen already this week with that center part. I think everyone is stripping it down—it’s less over-the-top. People are going back to their basics; where they came from.”
And if his description of what the Proenza girl is and what his ideal girl is doesn’t sound like the coolest girl ever, we don’t know who is. “It’s my fifth time working with them now and it feels like it’s always the same girl, but a progression every season. She always has that nuance to her, that she’s a little dangerous still. She’s not a good girl, the Proenza girl. I hate to use the word rock-and-roll because they’re clothes aren’t rock-and-roll. Everyone wants to be that girl and I think in the hair should feel like that. She’s not obsessed about the way she looks. Like that model Julia Nobis. She’s more about, “I’m wearing great clothes and I look great. Who cares about my hair?” I’m more about that attitude and that woman.”
Proenza totally understands that we don’t always have time for a French twist chignon and that maybe we’re not interested in those elaborate things anyways. And we think that perhaps not wanting to deal with all of that is what makes us way cooler.—RAY SIEGEL