Rough Riders: Textured Hairstyles

The latest hair muses? Woolly clouds and spun cotton candy. New products bring mega-volume and airy lightness to styles that are all about matte, lived-in texture.

 There was a time, not so long ago, when it would have been as unthinkable to intentionally dull down a glossy head of hair as it would be to spray a coat of rust on a factory-new car. But if the recent rage for greige nails and prematurely gray hair has taught us anything at all, it’s to expect the unexpected. And while healthy, high-shine tresses remain a covetable attribute, a slept-in, just-hopped-off-a-bicycle look is what’s au courant. From the artfully ratty ponytails done by Redken Creative Consultant Guido Paulo at Calvin Klein to Jimmy Paul’s cotton-candy-like beehives at Vera Wang, models stomped down the runways at scores of spring/summer 2011 shows sporting strands that weren’t just insouciantly disheveled, but downright messy. And, yes, matte.

“Textured, matte hair looks really modern and sexy right now,” says Paulo. “It’s a little more unkempt and rock ’n’ roll, so it has a certain ease.” Bumble and bumble stylist Jordan M., who scrunched models’ hair in his hands under a blow-dryer to give them fuzzy, fluttery flyaways for the Cushnie et Ochs catwalk, loves the casual effect it bestows on even the most prim updo: “You can put hair up into a bun or even set it, but a matte finish will keep it looking young and fresh instead of too ladylike and polished.” It’s something dry-shampoo enthusiasts have known for a while: There’s just something ineffably cool about soft-focus strands.

Bumble and bumble’s newest styling product—Bb. Texture—is designed specifically to create the rough, mussed style in one easy step. “We started seeing that sort of hand-done, second-day-hair look on the streets and on celebrities like Alexa Chung and Mary-Kate Olsen a couple of seasons ago,” says the company’s senior artistic director, Howard McClaren, “but stylists were having to use a combination of products—usually surf spray, hair powder, and styling cream—to reproduce it for shows. So we thought, there’s a real need here for something completely new.” After quizzing stylists and clients about their dream combination of qualities—dry texture with volume and no stickiness, memory and grip but also movability—Bumble’s product development team landed on the idea of a gel-cream hybrid: “It has the moldable hold of a gel, but separates and moisturizes like a cream,” says Jordan M., who recommends running Texture from roots to ends in wet hair before blow-drying it with a diffuser, or cautiously working it into just the roots of hair “to bump up body and give it that just-rolled-out-of-bed look.”

Whether used to make classic styles look edgy, to give a modern twist to wiglike ’60s shapes, or to revamp the season’s big bombshell hair, “matte hair conveys a real nonchalance,” Paulo says. “That’s partly what makes it so versatile.” Indeed, McClaren says, “the whole idea is to look like you couldn’t care less. Even though, of course, you do.”