Pastel Hair Color seems so new, but is so vintage…

Pastel Hair Color like lavender, pale pink, and blue are a very vintage hairstyle concept.

Pastel Hair Colors like pink, lavender, and pale blue may seem new and fresh, but the reality is that is has been a hairstyle trend women have been experimenting with for centuries. Vintage pastel hair color options could include pink, lavender, blue and yellow. The color wasn’t a rebellion either. Although the women wearing it were a bit eccentric, it was actually considered very high fashion and European to wear your hair this way.

The above 1930s French vintage beauty magazine article from Paris titled Cheveux de Couleur, which literally translates to Hair Color, describes the trend among society women to color their hair in a variety of bright, unnatural hair colors. These colors include blue, violet, rose, and even green!

Actress, interior decorator, and New York socialite Elsie de Wolfe famously wore her grey hair in a pale blue color and was rumored to have commissioned Cartier to make a special jeweled headdress to wear that matched her blue hair. She made the pastel color hair trend popular in the 1930s by overly toning her grey hair and it caught on quickly with her older society friends.

In the 1950s, women were embracing color in every aspect of their lives. Their kitchens, their couches, and their beauty product packaging were exploding in pastel colors. It was only natural for them to want their hairstyles to follow suit.

In this Lapinal Creme Hair Color advertisement, pastel color offerings include:

• white pink
• blonde pink
• tickled pink
• and tickled pinker

Now that very unnatural bright hair color is on trend and more acceptable, less on the fringe, the pale pastel hair color look can be done with little to no ostracization by the public. Bright hair color, and I am showing my age now, was something only punk rockers did and therefore was not socially acceptable.