Redheads

Gold reserves on your head—that’s what Teresa Buecker called it when she was writing about redheads as a trend at Fashion Week. Or rather, she was writing about what happens when people constantly reduce you to one physical feature, keep noticing it, keep making it the first thing they see about you. Eventually the feature stops being incidental and becomes your whole identity, your obsession. You resist it for a while but it doesn’t stick. Somewhere along the way you’ve made it yours. This feature, which I am constantly reduced to, has become my personal obsession, she said. That’s what stuck with me—not the trend itself but what the trend does to you once you’re in it.

That season’s collections had a similar quality, maybe just coincidence. Silk and chiffon, sepia-toned evening wear, pastels and bare skin. Nothing looked polished or final; everything felt like it was still becoming, like people were figuring it out as they went. Which is maybe all a trend is anyway—someone notices something about a person or a detail, and then everyone starts looking for it, and then the people with that thing can’t see themselves without it.