There’s something almost mystical about the way we see our hair. It’s the one part of us we can change completely and still feel like ourselves. Some people keep the same hairstyle for years—a quiet devotion to familiarity and consistency. Others, like me, can’t seem to stay in one look for more than a few months. My camera roll could easily double as a hair archive. Every phase of my life has been marked by a different cut, texture, or colour.
My first dye job happened the moment I left secondary school: a mossy grey-green blend I thought made me look effortlessly cool (spoiler alert—it didn’t). Then came the Pulp Fiction-inspired Uma Thurman bob in 2018. It felt sharp and cinematic—until I realised how high-maintenance blunt bangs really were. And of course, the buzz-cut era I ventured into during university, which was equal parts freedom and chaos. Each style felt urgent and important at the time—a shedding of whatever had come before.
Back then, I told myself it was just experimentation, the thrill of switching things up. But looking back, every change carried something raw and emotional: the fervent chop after a breakup; the jet-black box dye before starting a new job; the decision to finally grow it out and stop fighting the texture. Hair became the most visible record of every shift in my life. It didn’t just represent my current phase—it offered a way to show the world that I was free-spirited, creative, and unapologetically myself. Like a tattoo, but with less permanence.
Lately, it feels as though our relationship with hair has changed. It used to be about control—using the right serum, perfecting that immaculate curl, and maintaining a blowout that could survive Singapore’s fervent humidity. Beauty once felt like something to be tamed into submission.
Photo: Courtesy of Hermès
Photo: Courtesy of Gucci
Now, it feels softer. On the fashion front, the past few seasons—starting with Spring/Summer 2025—have seen natural hair take centre stage on the runways. Maisons such as Dior, Coach, and Gucci have embraced curls, waves, and even frizz in all their glory, favouring them over once-infallible, pristine styles.
That acceptance has trickled down. Online, conversations around hair are less about maintenance and more about meaning. A quick scroll through HairTok shows people cutting their bangs at 2am not for aesthetics, but for catharsis. It’s oddly comforting.
Perhaps that’s the quiet evolution happening in beauty right now: we’re letting go of ideals, precision, and the need to look “done” or hyper- made-up. There’s beauty in the undone, the overgrown, the lived-in. Frizz doesn’t bother me the way it used to. My roots grow out, and I leave them—sans shame. My hair is no longer a performance. It’s a mood, a mirror, a kind of living diary that I’m finally embracing.
Ultimately, hair teaches us that change is inevitable—and forgiving. No matter what we do to it, it grows back. Maybe that’s why we keep reaching for the scissors, the bleach, the box dye: not to become someone new, but to remind ourselves that transformation is always possible, always near, if we’re brave enough to take it by the hand.
On a deeper level, hair reflects how we see beauty itself. It’s one of the few parts of us that is at once personal and public—a bridge between how we feel inside, how we want to be seen, and how we’re actually seen. The way we style it—or don’t—becomes a kind of language, a soft assertion of who we are in that particular moment. Whether it’s slicked back, left wild, or cropped close to the scalp, our hair tells a story long before we even open our mouths.
Maybe that’s why hair holds so much power. Because beauty isn’t really about perfection anymore—it’s about recognition. About catching your own reflection and knowing, yes, that’s me—even if we never look the same twice. If our hair is the frame around that moment of recognition, then it’s never just an accessory. It’s identity. It’s emotion. It’s proof that we contain multitudes—and that we’re allowed to keep changing.
This story first appeared in the November 2025 issue of GRAZIA Singapore.
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