THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 10, 1996 TAG: 9609100040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MONIQUE WILLIAMS, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: 64 lines
YOUR HAIR may stand on end when you see what's the rage in daring 'dos.
Strokes of contrasting colors - blond on red hair or white on black hair - are walking out of local salons.
Some call it the skunk look, and it looks, uh, interesting.
The new hair streaking is distinguished from the highlighting that was commonplace for years. Instead of the 40 or more thin locks of hair that were colored in the more subtle versions seen in the past, skunkers color only 12 or so large chunks to achieve a bold effect.
``It's designed to put color on like the sun,'' says Jeff Fava from the Giuseppe Fava salon in Virginia Beach. ``We only put a few highlights in big chunks.''
Charla Malone, a 28-year old Mary Kay consultant in Virginia Beach, wanted a fashion-forward look and opted for long streaks of blond on her red hair.
``It's a summer thing,'' she says. ``By winter, I'll be all red.''
Often, the streaking is done on that most famous of cuts - the ``Friends'' cut sported by actress Jennifer Aniston on the hit NBC-TV show.
Coloring one's hair is a fun way to achieve an immediate and visible change.
``I needed a change,'' says 27-year old Melina Heitcamp, a retail assistant manager in Virginia Beach, who needed a lift after her baby was born. ``I needed to do something different with my hair,'' she says.
Like everything else about fashion, which has an obsession with mirroring itself, this
trend has been here before.
No, you say? Well, grab that May 19, 1952, Life magazine issue sitting on your coffee table, turn to pages 101-102 and see for yourself.
Then, the colored streaks were called ``powdered streaks,'' and they were not permanent hair color. They were powder that went on like talcum, and when fashion slaves tired of it, they could wash that white right out of their hair.
The talcum was a tinted metallic powder, a gargantuan improvement over the flour 18th century women used to achieve the same results.
Recent history is peppered (streaked?) with skunks of all stripes.
Virginia Clinton Kelley, the mother of president Clinton, put her official imprimatur on the 'do. She sported her skunked pompadour with presidential panache.
And if you grew up during the '60s, you surely know remember (Yvonne de Carlo) from the television hit ``The Munsters.''
The current wave of streaking was brought on by the fashion industry. Model Linda Evangelista, the industry's chameleon, was recently seen with a blond front and a black back.
Ruth P. Rubinstein, fashion sociologist at the Fashion Institute of Technology, says that drastic hair styles are in response to what's going on in our society and to the images of violence that surround us.
``It's deeper than just following a trend,'' she says. ``It's to reflect our own feelings. We, too, are in shock.''
Hairdresser Fava also sees the trend as a knee-jerk reaction to the no-sex, no-drugs, fearful climate that prevails today.
``People work on themselves,'' he says, philosophically. ``Bodies are in.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Joining the skunking trend are Melina Heitcamp, top, whose black
hair has white highlights, and Charla Malone, who has blond streaks
in her red hair. by CNB