Met Gala 2024 | Butt-skimming hair is the big red carpet trend

While the preoccupation ‘to chop or not to chop’ one’s hair into a trending bob has recurred over the last few months, this year’s Met Gala will have you debunking any thoughts of committing to a chin-length cut. Enter: The butt-skimming hair trend.

The annual Met Gala took place overnight (6 May, 2024) and while the fashions were as otherworldly as they usually are, it was an unexpected hair trend that had us most surprised.

Now, I’m no trend forecaster, but as a beauty journalist who’s (insert humble brag, here) hot on predicting celebrity red carpet beauty looks (one may like my eager talents to that of flies flocking to sh*t), today, my forte fell shorts… womp, womp. In other words, diverting from the apparently soaring bob brigade takeover (cc. Rita Ora, Sydney Sweeney and Maude Apatow), the 2024 event of the year was inundated with XXL hair looks like never before – and I, master of all beauty linguistic trades , didn’t see it coming.

But ‘why were long locks a go-to hairstyle for this year’s Met Gala?’, I hear you ask. Well, Anna Wintour, the chair of the annual benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute since 1999, dictated the theme as “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” to which guests followed a dress code, named “The Garden of Time” – a nod to JG Ballard’s 1962 tale. In short, the story details Count Axel, his Countess and their dwindling garden as an angry mob descends on their peaceful home and nursery of crystalline flowers.

For you and I, this translated into celebrity red carpet looks that channeled whimsical, ethereal and pre-Raphaelite-length hair. We saw this with a number of beauty looks, including Ariana Grande, Da’Vine Joy, Serena Williams, Madelyn Cline and more.

Cindy Ord/MG24

Arturo Holmes/MG24//Getty Images

Jamie McCarthy//Getty Images

Cindy Ord/MG24//Getty Images

The institute itself described the exhibition as “a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion and a vehicle to examine the cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal.”

Jamie McCarthy//Getty Images

Jamie McCarthy//Getty Images

Dia Dipasupil//Getty Images

Dia Dipasupil//Getty Images

And so, with that in mind, we think it’s only plausible to applaud those sleeping beauties who really did awaken fashion with the accessory of hair. After all, nothing says “iconography related to nature” more than uncut lengths, right?

Having said all that, will this butt-skimming boom of red carpet hair transcend into an everyday, wearable trend for the spring/summer 24 season? I guess only time will tell…

Follow Lia on Instagram.

Related Posts