Photo: Dimitris Giannetos
Human hair has become a fashion fixation in recent times. At Collina Strada’s New York Fashion Week spring 2026 show, designer Hillary Taymour sent hairy beanies down the runway, while Schiaparelli and Simone Rocha have produced human hair accessories, neckties, and earrings. At Duran Lantink’s debut collection for Jean Paul Gaultier, graphic bodysuits of male pubic hair, hairy chests, and hairier bellies were on shocking display. At Coachella, hairstylist and creative director Charlie Le Mindu made blonde Cousin It-esque monsters out of Doja Cat’s back-up dancers, in line with his avant-garde, otherworldly hair looks.
You can trace fashion’s pubic hair purveyors all the way through the cultural zeitgeist, from the Tom Ford-era Gucci ad with a hairy G below the waistband (as shaped by hairstylist Orlando Pita) in 2004, to the “full bush in a bikini” TikTok trend earlier this year. Kardashian, it seems, noticed the growing trend early, and got to work.
One of the most striking uses of hair came in the form of Galliano’s last Margiela couture show, where models wore merkins underneath the translucent gowns. Ariana Grande opted for the ephemeral, metallic dress from the spring 2024 couture show, but opted not to sport the merkin. Bjork, however, went all-in on the look, posing on the cover of Vogue Scandinavia in the blurred tulle Margiela gown with a merkin wig, fashioned from real human hair and painstakingly embroidered to the crotch of an underlaid silk stocking bodysuit.
Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway.com
Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
The look Kim Kardashian chose from Findikoglu was just one of many from the London-based Turkish design that features intricate hair braiding details, and Findikoglu’s hair-adorned designs have also found fans in others including Julia Fox. Eve in the Garden of Eden-like, Fox wore the transparent dress from Findikoglu’s spring 2023 collection to the 2025 Oscars after-party, with longtime hairstylist John Novotny styling her own hair in long, loose spirals through the gauzy gown. For Findikoglu, whose designs interrogate traditional modes of femininity and unspools them into powerfully sensually looks, hair acts as armor and invitation into her gothic underworld. Each look and each designer’s dalliance with hair has a vastly different effect and intention.
