Allure, the first and only magazine devoted to beauty, is an insider's guide to a woman's total image. Allure investigates and celebrates beauty and fashion with objectivity and candor, and places appearance in a larger cultural context.
She has the pillowy lips and mind-boggling proportions on lock, but Emily Ratajkowski saw one major obstacle to her transformation into Sophia Loren: “People always think I’m Italian or Mediterranean,” said our August cover star, “but I’m actually Polish.” Ancestry be damned. With a flick of eyeliner, a lusty laugh, and a rack of dresses made for evenings on the Riviera, the model and actress morphed into the Italian screen goddess—and our cameras captured every second. Watch it at allure.com/emily-video.…
A 7 a.m. call time is not something anyone is thrilled about. But when it affords you the chance to see a glowing orange fireball rise over the Atlantic in a way that surpasses Instagram-manufactured perfection, you can overlook fatigue. Or at least Emily Ratajkowski can. “Good morning, Miami!” announced the 26-year-old model, who arrived at her first Allure cover shoot, at a private beachfront residence on Key Biscayne, all smiles and energy. Wearing denim on denim, Ratajkowski dug into a breakfast of champions or, you know, bikini models: scrambled eggs, bacon, berries, Greek yogurt. Then it was all business as she slipped in and out of wigs of all shapes (including a curly bob that had the crew reminiscing about Linda Evangelista in the ’90s), an oversize Marc Jacobs…
ORIBE The master of bombshell hair worked his magic on Emily Ratajkowski for our cover. Oribe has called some of the sexiest women in the world— Sophia Loren, Cindy Crawford, Jennifer Lopez—clients. So when the hairstylist describes Allure cover girl Ratajkowski as “the ultimate bombshell,” they’re not words to be taken lightly. “I thought she was the sexiest girl I’ve seen since Jennifer Lopez,” he says. He tousled her hair and put her in wigs, but “at the end of the day,” he says, “what’s sexy is the confidence that comes with the hair.” JAWARA The man behind Solange’s hair is as much sculptor as stylist—and uses his work in Allure to telegraph a beautiful message. “I imagined a society of people that adorn their hair with jewels. They’re regal…
the space between bob and lob is an awkward one. I loved my short, side-swooped, shaved-at-the-nape cut for 18 months, but the fickle Taurus in me was craving something new, which meant months of Transition Hair. After a few false starts (I’d chicken out and beg Wes at Hairstory for an emergency trim), it was time to try. Three weeks past my usual trim time, my hair was still too short to corral into a ponytail (except for the not-so-business-appropriate super high samurai nubbin). And my morning hair struggles only made me itch for a cut more. Then I had an idea. I reached out to hairstylist DJ Quintero to try on wigs, with a few parameters: longer than a lob, and black or blackish. I met him at the…
Get a glimpse inside Jessica Williams’s makeup bag at allure.com/jessica-williams. I have never been a “hair person.” Growing up, my mom and my sister, who loved to get their hair done, would always give me a hard time about not getting mine done. But I don’t like hurting. And a lot of the time, to get my hair done, I would have to get it hot-combed and pressed—and that involves having a really hot metal comb running through your hair. I was six; I hated that. I ended up living in braids. It was the ’90s—thin braids were very popular—and my mom took me to a lady’s kitchen. I got it done, and I’ve never stopped. Now my natural hair is who I am. I have lots of braids, and…
5CENTURIES SINCE LEONARDO DA VINCI made observations about hair that partially inspired the Rapunzel number, a formula that predicts the shape of any ponytail. $ 8THE COST OF AN INVISIBOBBLE, a ponytail holder that looks like the cord of an old-fashioned telephone and leaves no creases or kinks on hair. $ 20,000 PRICE THAT MADONNA’S Blond Ambition tour clip-on ponytail sold for at auction. 1954 YEAR PABLO PICASSO approached 19-year-old Sylvette David and began his “ponytail period,” during which he painted dozens of portraits of her with her blonde hair pulled up in the hairstyle. 2010YEAR THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT banned ponytails on men as a way of ridding the country of “decadent” Western hairstyles (also forbidden: mullets). 41 YEARS KARL LAGERFELD has been wearing his signature ponytail.…
