{"id":1409428,"date":"2026-01-20T12:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1409428"},"modified":"2026-01-20T12:37:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:37:00","slug":"the-blue-hair-renaissance-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1409428","title":{"rendered":"The blue hair renaissance is here"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article-body wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<p><span>The blue hair renaissance is upon us. The signs are everywhere: Oklou went blue last year to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.papermag.com\/oklou-choke-enough-album#rebelltitem5\">coincide with the release of <em>choke enough<\/em><\/a>, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bassvictim\/?hl=en\">Bassvictim<\/a>\u2019s Maria Manow\u2019s icy tresses have slowly but surely become a signature part of her look. Kardashian scion North West has been experimenting with vibrant shades of turquoise for months, as have internet cool girls like singer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/beauty\/article\/69297\/1\/cannelle-2026-beauty-affirmations-routines-scents-product-recommendations\">Cannelle<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DRr2kRODK0G\/?igsh=aHV2aTllNWltNHV1\">Olivia Halle<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DTGlIp1EyOV\/?igsh=MTc0dmxnaWwxZXNlMA%3D%3D\">Angela Guzman<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><span>Sabrina Bahsoon (AKA Tube Girl) <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@sabrinabahsoon\/video\/7584567849318894856?lang=en-GB\"><span>recently took to social media to reveal<\/span><\/a><span> her new blue locks, as did <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DTdVAEsjCrW\/\">Jorja Smith<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DR8oR_NDKIq\/?utm_source=ig_embed\">Cardi B<\/a>. <\/span><span>Others like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/ashnikko\">Ashnikko<\/a> have been way ahead of the curve, committing to blue hair for years now \u2013 and, of course, it would be remiss not to mention Kylie Jenner, who brought teal dip-dyes to the mainstream during her 2015 \u2018King Kylie\u2019 era and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DPxMx2zkrdT\/?img_index=1\"><span>revisited the iconic look<\/span><\/a><span> as recently as October.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Elsewhere, salons have noticed a small but significant uptick in clients looking to go blue. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/tag\/alex-brownsell\"><span>Alex Brownsell<\/span><\/a><span>, founder of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/tag\/bleach-london\"><span>Bleach London<\/span><\/a><span>, says the number of people coming to Bleach for blue hair has \u201c<\/span><span>definitely increased\u201d over the last few months<\/span><span>, with a marked \u201c<\/span><span>uptick\u201d in interest in the blue shades from the brand\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bleachlondon.com\/collections\/super-cool-colours\"><span>Super Cool Colours<\/span><\/a><span> range over the last six months. \u201cWe did an Icy Blue salon takeover with Pinterest in December, based on the shade being one of their most searched and pinned terms,\u201d she says. \u201cWe gave away 24 hours of free blue hair, and there was a queue down the street.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The writing\u2019s on the wall: a more playful, maximalist era of beauty is on the horizon (thank God). But why is loud, proud blue hair making a comeback <\/span><em><span>now<\/span><\/em>?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"instagram-container embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"media-instagram\" data-script-depends=\"instagram-embeds\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<p><span>The revival can likely be partly attributed to fatigue with the minimalism of the \u2018clean girl aesthetic\u2019, which has dominated mainstream beauty culture for years now. People are tired of homogeneity and \u2018perfection\u2019 \u2013 especially in the face of the AI boom \u2013 and are yearning for aesthetics which feel a little more messy, creative, human and, crucially, fun. It\u2019s a shift which is also evident in the ongoing social media trend which sees people express nostalgia for 2016, a time when beauty was a lot more playful (and girls with colourful hair reigned supreme on Tumblr). \u201c<\/span><span>Maybe the post-Covid generation are feeling emboldened by the return of nightlife and subculture and are wanting to experiment a bit more,\u201d Brownsell posits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It\u2019s ultimately little wonder that people are hankering for a radical counter to the same-y looks that have become so ubiquitous over the last half-decade: you don\u2019t have to be a seasoned forecaster to know that once a trend reaches a certain level of saturation, consumers get bored and hanker for novelty, prompting past trends to re-emerge. But the blue hair revival isn\u2019t <\/span><em><span>just<\/span><\/em><span> a matter of people getting bored of \u2018natural\u2019 beauty. Beauty is always political, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/beauty\/article\/65234\/1\/shift-beauty-standards-trump-win-president-utah-curls-nara-smith\"><span>it\u2019s no coincidence<\/span><\/a><span> the dominance of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/beauty\/article\/66958\/1\/beauty-backslide-how-the-pendulum-swung-back-to-thinness-and-conservatism\">\u2018clean\u2019 beauty has coincided with the dominance of conservative politics<\/a> which valorise traditional and conventional aesthetics; with this in mind, it\u2019s possible that the nascent return of more \u2018alternative\u2019 style suggests that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/life-culture\/article\/69189\/1\/woke-is-back-or-is-it-zohran-mamdani-zack-polanski-left-wing-politics\"><span>woke really is back<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cBlue hair is the polar opposite of the MAGA beauty aesthetic, which adheres to a traditional feminine ideal,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rachaelghair.com\/\">hair historian Rachael Gibson<\/a>. \u201cAs we navigate through increasingly challenging and painful times, I think it\u2019s understandable that lots of people are choosing to arm themselves with a hair colour that has long been associated with being an outsider, in a bid to avert the male gaze and represent more liberal political ideals in a very visual way.\u201d Brownsell adds: \u201cPeople seem especially open to more leftfield shades at the moment \u2013 maybe it\u2019s a case of not feeling at home on such a dysfunctional planet and wanting a form of non-human expression.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<blockquote>\n<p><span>Blue hair is the polar opposite of the MAGA beauty aesthetic, which adheres to a traditional feminine ideal<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<p><span>Hair has long been a canvas for political statements: from <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/beauty\/article\/57020\/1\/iranian-women-are-shaving-their-heads-in-protest-of-mahsa-amini-death\"><span>Iranian women shaving their heads<\/span><\/a><span> to protest against the treatment of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in police custody in Tehran in 2022; to anti-war hippies growing their hair long to signify their rejection of the military in the 1970s; to the civil rights activists of the 1960s challenging Eurocentric beauty standards by embracing the afro. \u201cAs status updates go, hair is one of the most easily read, as both a public signifier and a deeply personal expression of the inner self,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cSome of the ways we choose to wear it mark us out as adhering to established social structures; other choices are more about rejecting what\u2019s expected by society, religion, politics, and so on. Going against the grain is always a way of standing out, and in many cases, standing up for what you believe in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When it comes to blue hair specifically, the look has long been associated with rebellion, the underground, and anti-establishment beliefs. \u201cThe punk era saw great strides made in creative colour and blue remained the alternative hair colour choice for decades,\u201d Gibson says. For a while, \u201ctinting greying hair with blue became closely associated with older Conservative women, dubbed the \u2018Blue Rinse brigade\u2019 by the press\u201d \u2013 but after the 1990s, the blue hair ball bounced back into the left\u2019s court. \u201cThe term \u2018blue-haired feminist\u2019 began circulating in the late 2010s, intended as an insult for outspoken women online who refused to subdue themselves, in terms of their opinions and their aesthetic,\u201d Gibson explains. To this day, the right continues to make jabs <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/libsoftiktok\/status\/1927153283988177343\">about blue hair<\/a> to insult their political opponents.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Of course, it\u2019s standard for aesthetic trends to become divorced from their roots, especially in the age of the internet, where images are free to circulate sans context online. The clean girl aesthetic is actually an apt example of this: while the poster children of the trend\u2019s recent iteration are generally white women \u2013 Hailey Bieber, for example \u2013 practices like laying edges and hair oiling originate from Black and brown cultures. This is to say that not everyone who dyes their hair blue is a card-carrying queer radical socialist: while no doubt some of those dyeing their tresses are doing so to flex their leftie credentials, others, by contrast, will be doing it as a form of rebellion (North West) or just like the way it looks (I\u2019d love to be wrong about this, but I doubt Kylie Jenner the billionaire is going to start quoting Mark Fisher and advocating for a wealth tax). Either way, whether those reaching for the bleach have political motivations or not, one thing is clear: blue hair is back.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"newsletter-inline-last\">\n<div class=\"newsletter-small\">\n<div class=\"inner\">\n<h1 class=\"newsletter-title\">Escape the algorithm! Get The Drop<\/h1>\n<div class=\"meta-row\">\n<p class=\"meta\">Get must-see stories direct to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/privacy-policy\" class=\"meta-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><br \/>\nPrivacy policy<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"confirmation\" aria-live=\"polite\">\n<p class=\"confirmation-title\">Thank you. You have been subscribed<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/privacy-policy\" class=\"meta-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><br \/>\nPrivacy policy<br \/>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p> Source URL: https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/beauty\/article\/69440\/1\/blue-hair-is-back-2016-nostalgia-clean-girl-fatigue-bleach-london-woke-maga<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The blue hair renaissance is upon us. The signs are everywhere: Oklou went blue last year to coincide with the release of choke enough, while Bassvictim\u2019s Maria Manow\u2019s icy tresses have slowly but surely become a signature part of her look. Kardashian scion North West has been experimenting with vibrant shades of turquoise for months, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-1409428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-dazeddigital-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1409428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1409428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1409428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1409428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}