At New York Fashion Week, luxury and excess were the names of the game — especially at Donna Karan’s Fall show, where runway models like it-girl Kendall Jenner were flaunting long, sleek tresses with dramatic side parts.
These polished hairstyles were achieved thanks to the help of hair extensions. A whopping $35,000 worth of them, to be exact.
According to Elle, the hefty price tag even came as a surprise to Donna Karan’s stylists themselves.
“It’s a lot of weave,” Eugene Souleiman, Wella Professionals Creative Director and the look’s architect, admitted. “But hey, if you want that look, you got to pay.”
While there was definitely an opulent, excess-driven feel to these hairstyles, the look was also minimal and pulled-back in feel — the perfect balance to the Donna Karan collection itself, and a reflection of the “powerful women” the line targets.
“Hair extensions are the new go to product for added volume and length,” says Capri Bougere, Owner/Operator, Strictly Styles Salon. “They can be easily applied to the majority of textures of hair. I personally wear extensions because I don’t have the time in the morning to comb hair. But it makes my life a lot easier and with hair extensions that runway look is instant.”
To achieve this look, Donna Karan stylists first gave every model her extensions, then parted the hair in a precise, straight line to the left side. To give the hair its sleek, sculpted appearance in the front, Souleiman used Wella Sculpt Force Flubber Gel.
The hair was then tucked behind the models’ ears, the extensions flowing freely down to a blunt edge just below the shoulder blades, offering a more free-flowing contrast to the polished, synthetic look of the front of the hairstyle. A final spritz of hairspray helped blend the look’s dual textures (sculpted in the front, natural in the back).
“For the Donna Karan woman, luxury is never an either/or. It’s an and,” Karan herself explained.
And for every model walking the runway at Donna Karan, the mix between function and fantasy in Karan’s collection was highly apparent.