The blue hair renaissance is upon us. The signs are everywhere: Oklou went blue last year to coincide with the release of choke enough, while Bassvictim’s Maria Manow’s icy tresses have slowly but surely become a signature part of her look. Kardashian scion North West has been experimenting with vibrant shades of turquoise for months, as have internet cool girls like singer Cannelle, Olivia Halle and Angela Guzman. Sabrina Bahsoon (AKA Tube Girl) recently took to social media to reveal her new blue locks, as did Jorja Smith and Cardi B. Others like Ashnikko have been way ahead of the curve, committing to blue hair for years now – and, of course, it would be remiss not to mention Kylie Jenner, who brought teal dip-dyes to the mainstream during her 2015 ‘King Kylie’ era and revisited the iconic look as recently as October.

Elsewhere, salons have noticed a small but significant uptick in clients looking to go blue. Alex Brownsell, founder of Bleach London, says the number of people coming to Bleach for blue hair has “definitely increased” over the last few months, with a marked “uptick” in interest in the blue shades from the brand’s Super Cool Colours range over the last six months. “We did an Icy Blue salon takeover with Pinterest in December, based on the shade being one of their most searched and pinned terms,” she says. “We gave away 24 hours of free blue hair, and there was a queue down the street.”

The writing’s on the wall: a more playful, maximalist era of beauty is on the horizon (thank God). But why is loud, proud blue hair making a comeback now?

The revival can likely be partly attributed to fatigue with the minimalism of the ‘clean girl aesthetic’, which has dominated mainstream beauty culture for years now. People are tired of homogeneity and ‘perfection’ – especially in the face of the AI boom – and are yearning for aesthetics which feel a little more messy, creative, human and, crucially, fun. It’s a shift which is also evident in the ongoing social media trend which sees people express nostalgia for 2016, a time when beauty was a lot more playful (and girls with colourful hair reigned supreme on Tumblr). “Maybe the post-Covid generation are feeling emboldened by the return of nightlife and subculture and are wanting to experiment a bit more,” Brownsell posits. 

It’s ultimately little wonder that people are hankering for a radical counter to the same-y looks that have become so ubiquitous over the last half-decade: you don’t have to be a seasoned forecaster to know that once a trend reaches a certain level of saturation, consumers get bored and hanker for novelty, prompting past trends to re-emerge. But the blue hair revival isn’t just a matter of people getting bored of ‘natural’ beauty. Beauty is always political, and it’s no coincidence the dominance of ‘clean’ beauty has coincided with the dominance of conservative politics which valorise traditional and conventional aesthetics; with this in mind, it’s possible that the nascent return of more ‘alternative’ style suggests that woke really is back.

“Blue hair is the polar opposite of the MAGA beauty aesthetic, which adheres to a traditional feminine ideal,” says hair historian Rachael Gibson. “As we navigate through increasingly challenging and painful times, I think it’s understandable that lots of people are choosing to arm themselves with a hair colour that has long been associated with being an outsider, in a bid to avert the male gaze and represent more liberal political ideals in a very visual way.” Brownsell adds: “People seem especially open to more leftfield shades at the moment – maybe it’s a case of not feeling at home on such a dysfunctional planet and wanting a form of non-human expression.”

Blue hair is the polar opposite of the MAGA beauty aesthetic, which adheres to a traditional feminine ideal

Hair has long been a canvas for political statements: from Iranian women shaving their heads to protest against the treatment of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in police custody in Tehran in 2022; to anti-war hippies growing their hair long to signify their rejection of the military in the 1970s; to the civil rights activists of the 1960s challenging Eurocentric beauty standards by embracing the afro. “As status updates go, hair is one of the most easily read, as both a public signifier and a deeply personal expression of the inner self,” says Gibson. “Some of the ways we choose to wear it mark us out as adhering to established social structures; other choices are more about rejecting what’s expected by society, religion, politics, and so on. Going against the grain is always a way of standing out, and in many cases, standing up for what you believe in.”

When it comes to blue hair specifically, the look has long been associated with rebellion, the underground, and anti-establishment beliefs. “The punk era saw great strides made in creative colour and blue remained the alternative hair colour choice for decades,” Gibson says. For a while, “tinting greying hair with blue became closely associated with older Conservative women, dubbed the ‘Blue Rinse brigade’ by the press” – but after the 1990s, the blue hair ball bounced back into the left’s court. “The term ‘blue-haired feminist’ began circulating in the late 2010s, intended as an insult for outspoken women online who refused to subdue themselves, in terms of their opinions and their aesthetic,” Gibson explains. To this day, the right continues to make jabs about blue hair to insult their political opponents.

Of course, it’s standard for aesthetic trends to become divorced from their roots, especially in the age of the internet, where images are free to circulate sans context online. The clean girl aesthetic is actually an apt example of this: while the poster children of the trend’s recent iteration are generally white women – Hailey Bieber, for example – practices like laying edges and hair oiling originate from Black and brown cultures. This is to say that not everyone who dyes their hair blue is a card-carrying queer radical socialist: while no doubt some of those dyeing their tresses are doing so to flex their leftie credentials, others, by contrast, will be doing it as a form of rebellion (North West) or just like the way it looks (I’d love to be wrong about this, but I doubt Kylie Jenner the billionaire is going to start quoting Mark Fisher and advocating for a wealth tax). Either way, whether those reaching for the bleach have political motivations or not, one thing is clear: blue hair is back.