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Model Sarah Brannon wasn’t hankering for a change—she was seeking a seismic shift just in time for Paris Fashion Week.
Over the past few months, the 22-year-old Memphis native had been toying with the idea of ditching her long, raven lengths for a total hair metamorphosis. “My original impulse was to do something extreme, like dyeing it a shocking hair color or getting a buzz cut,” she explains. “Ultimately, though, I wanted to do something that was still consistent with my signature look and didn’t feel like it was ‘original’ just for the sake of it.” But while meditating on a color overhaul isn’t typically a black-and-white matter, in Brannon’s case, it was just that. “I decided to make my hair the exact opposite of what it was before,” she says. And making her long-awaited return to fashion month at Saint Laurent’s show last night, she unveiled a white-hot platinum dye job, freshly shorn chop, and fully bleached brows that rendered her virtually unrecognizable on the runway.
From Anja Rubik’s David Bowie–inspired electric copper coif to newcomer Hanna Kamelina’s ultraviolet-dipped ends, Brannon was, indeed, one of the 10 models who recalibrated their color for the show. But make no mistake: Her peroxide plunge had been a months-long journey of her own volition. “I spent days going to wig shops in New York City looking for [the perfect] platinum blonde that was closer to white than yellow,” explains Brannon, citing the blanched lengths of ’90s icons supermodel Nadja Auermann and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy as references. “I finally found the right wig, showed a couple of [colorists], then slowly began lightening my hair with the goal of reaching platinum blonde over time without damaging it.” But the process proved to be a bit more challenging than she thought, says Brannon: “I started to feel like I would have to settle for light brown or dark blonde.”
Enter Saint Laurent’s serendipitous call to action a few weeks back, with casting director Piergiorgio Del Moro and stylist Alastair McKimm not only encouraging her to push the blonde envelope for the show, but bringing in the big guns—hairstylist Duffy and colorist Lena Ott—to help her execute the final stages for her radical icy reveal on the Paris catwalks. And while her artificially lightened strands and arches bring plenty of shock factor on their own, her new, chin-grazing cut is also a vital part of the equation. “It’s a modern take on a classic bowl with a layered undercut that takes out the thickness and allows it to sit super tight to her head,” he explains. “The fringe [accentuates] her cheekbones and the length hits right at the jawline, revealing her shoulders and long neck, which were drowned out before under all that dark hair.” And Brannon is already right at home in yesterday’s glossy, finger-raked take on her abbreviated chop. “I like how it’s similar to Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity in The Matrix,” she says.
There are few things more committal than bleaching one’s hair snow-white and achieving zero trace of the remaining darkness, so it comes as little surprise that Brannon has no intention of straying from her new look anytime soon. But is there any semblance of longing to be brunette again? “Absolutely not,” she insists. “I was so ready for a change and I’m really into the idea of going completely against what is safe and well understood. I think authenticity ultimately comes from taking big [leaps]. For me the opportunity [to gain] is a lot bigger than the risk.”
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