La Chevelure, 1929

In 1929, Man Ray photographed a woman with her head hanging back, her blonde hair in free fall. Perhaps it was this photograph that inspired Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Cocteau to create a linen evening jacket for their 1937 autumn collection. On the front of the jacket, they applied an embroidered profile of a woman, which extends into hair made from embroidered bar beads that undulates over the right sleeve.

In recent decades, contemporary fashion designers have also found inspiration in Man Ray. In his 1999 spring/summer collection, Olivier Theyskens placed the hair motif on the back panel of a jacket. If the wearer has long, gold-coloured hair, this creates a trompe-l’oeil-effect.

Martin Margiela has also explored the strange side of hair in his fashion creations and artworks. This fascination probably goes back to his childhood ¬¬— his father owned a hair salon. Margiela regularly used hair or wigs to hide the faces of his models. During his last fashion show, in 2009, he had two identical-looking models wearing a wig back to front and walking simultaneously down the catwalk. Previously, in 1999, the Belgian fashion photographer Ronald Stoops also referenced the famous photograph taken by Man Ray 70 years earlier.