310 SEPTEMBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
When Charlotte
Mensah started
her career at Splinters, the
pioneering London salon
for women of color, learning
how to manipulate the baby
hairs around the forehead
was integral to her training.
“It was a big ’90s trend,” the
Ghanaian hairstylist says of
properly laying an edge, as the
technique is more commonly
known. Whether gelled into
intricate coils at Chromat or
fluffed into a fuzzy fringe that
peeked out of beanies at Marc
Jacobs, the wispy strands
around the hairline emerged
as a big backstage story line
for fall. But the style is more
than just a seasonal whim.
“We are reclaiming our culture
and traditions,” says Mensah,
who spent her formative years
doing her younger sister’s hair
before racking up a bolder-
faced clientele. (Erykah Badu,
Janelle Monáe, and the authors
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
and Zadie Smith are all regulars
at her Notting Hill salon, Hair
Lounge.) A new generation is
following suit, as actors such
as Laura Harrier and the
burgeoning Spanish pop star
Rosalía popularize artistic riffson the technique. “It’s about
more than just hair. It’s about
community,” Mensah says
of encouraging women to add
“flair” to natural styles—and
creating products to execute
them properly. Featuring
rare Namibian Manketti oil, an
ultra-nourishing, weightless
alternative to shea butter, her
three-year-old namesake line
launched on Net-a-Porter this
spring and will roll out two new
products this month, including
a Manketti-oil pomade, which
offers the perfect amount
of edge control. Mensah, who
is the first black woman to
be inducted into the British
Hairdressing Awards Hall of
Fame, will likely have the salve
on hand when she touches
down at New York Fashion
Week this month for her debut
U.S. residency, right before
heading to Lagos Fashion Week
in October. The trip to Africa will
offer the 49-year-old a chance
to check in on her ingredient
supply chain, while also setting
up the groundwork for her
passion project—a beauty
academy in Ghana—which is
all part of a continued effort to
“uplift women and girls of color
in a deeper way.”—AKILI KINGlegendary signatures. Asked why she put those baroque
leggings and metal-mesh minis on her catwalk, Versace says
the impulse was deeply personal: “Twenty years after my
brother’s passing, I felt the moment had come to face my own
personal demons and go back to the archive—I hadn’t been
since 1997. It was a cathartic process for me.” But she also
acknowledges a public clamoring for these designs. “There
is a nostalgia for the fashion of the ’90s because it was a
happier moment, in many ways. But fashion does not live in
a vacuum—it reflects what is happening in the world, so it
had to evolve into something else, too. Fashion can become a
weapon to express oneself, to feel bold and brave. People are
telling the world: Look at me—I have something to say.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Carla Sozzani, who worked
shoulder to shoulder with the late Azzedine Alaïa and is
spearheading what she calls the designer’s “everlasting project”
for those who were too young—or too broke—to flaunt his
skater dresses and nip-waisted coats the first time around.
Alaïa, a prolific artist with a staggering 22,000 creations in
his archive, was famous for his reinterpretations of signature
silhouettes. The commitment of the maison to keep the
designer’s vision alive through continual reissues makes you
wonder: Will looking back be the way forward for other houses
that no longer have their star designers at the helm? Is this
“permanent revolution” a new way to stay relevant?
“Alaïa’s work had no seasons,” Sozzani says. “He left a lot
of patterns half made, and there were so many new designs he
didn’t make. We reissue the editions exactly as he had made
them, except for maybe a little change in the fabric.” (They
also come with a special label stating the year when the original
garment was born.)
Dealers who once specialized in high-end vintage fashion
are also getting into the act. Not content to merely source
the stars of yesteryear, Gill Linton, who founded the
e-commerce site Byronesque in 2013, is the visionary behind
a new revival of Montana designs. “We reissued 11 archive
pieces, re-creating them exactly, using the same machinery
for the embroidery,” she says. Linton can tell you exactly
what else people are searching for now: early McQueen,
elusive Margiela, and, most of all, Nicolas Ghesquière–era
Balenciaga—especially the wildly patterned patchwork
dress from spring/summer 2002. (The flower-print neoprene
jacket from 2008 is running a close second.)
Marie Blanchet, the CEO at haute couture specialist William
Vintage, concurs: ’90s Balenciaga is white-hot. Blanchet adds
that her typical client—a powerful woman doing powerful
things!—is interested in designers who have put their own stamp
on heritage brands: She wants to feel sexy/serious in Tom Ford
for Gucci, or avant-garde/serious in Phoebe Philo for Céline.
Still, whether they plan to swan around campus in a Marc
Jacobs plaid grunge shirt or dine at Davos in a safety-pinned
Versace, these new vintage lovers are united by a real concern for
sustainability—no longer just a catchword but a genuine mission.
“Sustainability and stopping the waste that we see around
us is a must,” Versace says, fierce in her commitment to look
at things in a new way. “Knowing that fashion is the second-
biggest industry in terms of producing waste—it’s despicable!
This is something that goes beyond a fashion product—it has to
encompass our entire way of living.” —ly n n yaegerBEAUTY
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