The long-term psychological ramifications of social distancing, lockdown, quarantine, and WFH still remain to be seen, but these restrictions to our daily routines will inevitably tweak our relationship to personal style, and in some cases they already are. Shirts and ties are out, sweatpants and mandatory face-masks are in.
As our newly launched skincare hub makes clear, there's a lot of room to experiment with personal style as it pertains to updating – or even beginning – a personal skincare routine, and exploring new options with your hair as it inevitably grows out during lockdown is a natural next-step.
Dyeing your hair is an almost instant way to radically alter your appearance, which can provide pure aesthetic relief in times of stagnation and uncertainty. The truth is that even if you fuck this up no-one’s gonna see it unless you turn on your camera – some of us will emerge with Rick Owens-esque abs via home workouts and yoga livestreams and some will look as if we’ve been baking and eating our own bread for several months. All choices are valid right now.
Anyway, here’s the low-down on five hair colors you might want to try for your quarcore SS20 look. (And as a personal tip from the author who has bleached and dyed their hair many times pre-quarantine: Your hair will have a different texture after bleaching so buy an appropriate shampoo to soften it and use it often.)
Whole Lotta Red
Red says pay attention to me, but also leave me the fuck alone? Kind of like those tropical frogs that want to be looked at but you should probably keep your distance. Which is a perfect vibe for quar and staying 6ft away in the grocery store.
Perhaps you can find a similar sense of disclosure with an all over blast of hot-headed red.
Post-Millenial Pink
Skater, surfer, and Louis Vuitton model Evan Mock made a buzzed pink crop a part of his signature look, although he appears to be growing it out in lockdown. The light pink ends with contrasting dark roots is a look in itself, one which you could fast-track by simply coloring the ends of your hair as a kind of dip-dye – or going full Majin Buu as seen in our imagined concept of pink hair Shia above.
Slime Lime Green
You can’t really talk about green hair without talking about the seapunk micro-culture that sprung up on tumblr in the early ’10s. Azealia Banks’ debut Fantasea mixtape was an ode to the mermaid-riddled, 3d NET graphics that lived on the early versions of internet 1.0, and frequent hair-dyer Frank Ocean also repped lime green waves for the album cover for Blonde, shot by Wolfgang Tilmans. If you’ve never seen this image in excruciatingly high resolution, you should check it out here.
Since a head of green hair might be a little jarring if you’re used to something more natural, you could also styling this one with streaks, or just dipping in the ends a la Billie Eilish, albeit in reverse.
Channel Orange
Another Frank Ocean reference, why not? Orange is going to clash proudly with all your clothes and that's kind of the point here. Once again, if the full head of orange feels a bit much, why not just do half?
Bleach Blonde
The easiest and most surefire way to let people know you have simply had enough of whatever you’re going through is to zap your hair in bleach blonde. Bleach blonde says I've outgrown my toxic habits and now i'm trying to move on, or does it just say I'm going through a crisis? Either way, you will need to stock up on purple or silver-tinted shampoo to keep this one going.
