Short Circuit: The culture behind fall’s cropped cuts

To say that punk influenced the fall runways is an understatement; the late-’70s subculture bred from anti-establishment rock ’n’ roll dominated many collections. Aside from the tartan, vinyl, chains and studs, and the faux piercings on just one of the models’ lobes—a page ripped right out of the CBGB style guide—another trend rose from those anarchic ashes: choppy haircuts.

“Punk is an idea that was floating around,” Sam McKnight said backstage at Fendi, where he created haute fox-fur mohawks a few days after engineering a similar long-on-top, short-on-the-sides optical illusion at Clements Ribeiro.

“It might have been something in the air,” says Redken creative consultant Guido Palau of the punk theme, “but it wasn’t planned.” Other influences led him to create short styles at Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton and Jean Paul Gaultier—not least fashion’s fickle nature. “Designers see girls with long hair, and they get a little despondent. Sometimes they just want that different character, the kind of girl that would cut her hair.” Palau dates the move away from long, luxe locks to January 2013, when he cut over 40 wigs into gamine pixies for Raf Simons’s Spring 2013 Dior Haute Couture show. “Raf really wanted what that brings to an outfit—what that brings to a dress.”

You could argue that it started before that, though. While the big hair story at the spring shows was a wispy lob embraced by everyone from Ruby Aldridge to Karlie Kloss, even shorter styles were starting to gain traction. After Janice Alida appeared in a British Vogue story with a fade and a platinum dye job, the Calgary-born beauty’s career skyrocketed; runway turns for Lanvin, Marni and Louis Vuitton followed. Ditto Ruby Jean Wilson, who cashed in her long chocolate strands for a platinum chop and became Marc Jacobs’s spring muse, a latter-day Edie Sedgwick.

It wouldn’t be the last time Jacobs fell for a short cut. He chose a different Edie, Brit It girl Edie Campbell, as his Fall 2013 muse. “The Edie”—Campbell’s texturized black shag, which was the brainchild of photographer Steven Meisel on the set of a Vogue shoot months earlier—inspired the look at Jacobs’s show. “Marc saw that and he wanted wigs,” Palau recalls. He followed it up with ’50s-era hairpieces with microfringe at Vuitton and mismatched mullet extensions at Gaultier. “For me, and I think for designers, too, when we see a girl with short hair and love her anyway, we’re inspired.”

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