Skunk Hair Is the Perfect Look For Your Villain Era
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If you feel like your life has been in a consistent retrograde and you're ready to enter your villain era, you may be the perfect candidate for skunk hair — hear us out. Unlike some of the bolder cuts and colors, like modern mullets and Barbiecore hair, skunk hair is fierce and can be impossibly chic.
As the ultimate power move, skunk hair is for the confident. It's all about high contrasts and standing out. It's giving Narcissa Malfoy. It's giving Pepé Le Pew if he were a high-power player in Manhattan's elite. It's giving Cruella De Vil in a band.
Classic skunk hair contrasts black and white strands, but as with any beauty trend, there are no hard-cut rules. To better understand the trend, including what it is, what to ask your colorist for, and how to style it, we tapped a celebrity hairstylist to answer our questions. His answers, below.
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What Is Skunk Hair?
Moroccanoil Global Color Ambassador, Greg Gilmore, explains that skunk hair is basically a color placement consisting of block coloring with thick panels of white and block coloring — although other colors can be used besides black and white.
What's the Best Way to Get Skunk Hair?
Since skunk hair can be tailored to your taste, the first step is to decide where you want the color placement. "Think about highlighting your face shape or minimizing attention to the face," says Gilmore. "For example, if you have nice eye shape and a round face, section out a triangle in the top, which includes the bangs and place a lights color there to soften the face and frame the eyes."
Alternatively, he says that people with soft bone structures can give the face more boldness by placing lighter panels in the back (right above the ear and underneath the top area of hair) so the light colors can act as peek-a-boo chucks. "The great thing about this placement is that it can be touched up whenever you feel like it. It actually looks good when the hair isn't touched up, too," he says.
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What Are the Best Ways to Style Skunk Hair?
As we said, there are no rules when it comes to beauty. However, Gilmore suggests using a flat iron to make the hair bone-straight as "it shows off the color blocking well and can at the the sleekness of the style's aesthetic." For the best results, he suggests using Moroccanoil Treatment to smooth out the strands and give the hair a soft shine that won't weight it down.
If you're considering this badass trend, look below for some of our favorite ways to rock the trend.
Half-Up Half-Down
During her Future Nostalgia era, Dua Lipa was the queen of skunk hair. Here, she took her bleached pieces and styled them in a tight half-up half-down style.
Skunk Money Piece
Keep it sweet and simple with a high-contrast look. Take about an inch-width of hair and ask your colorist to bleach it to your preferred tone.
Gradient Skunk
A sharp cut pairs well with bold hair colors, and Nicki Minaj is an expert in that art. Here, the top part of her hair is dyed platinum blonde with the tips midnight black. While the contrast is radical, her front pieces have a bit of a gradient that softens the look.
Party In The Back
Instead of light money pieces, color-block the back part of your hair for a bolder, more unexpected statement.
Skunk Baby Braids
To achieve this Y2K look, add some dark braiding hair to your front pieces and make some baby braids.
Subtle Skunk Streaks
You can dabble into this fierce trend and still hide it if you please with this version of skunk hair. That way, you can let your hair down and hide the streaks, then pull your hair up for a fun surprise.
