Add another chapter to the Scrunchie Chronicles: Everyone’s favorite minimalist bag line Mansur Gavriel just introduced its own take on the ’90s trend.
“When I heard scrunchie, I was like, ‘Ahhhhhhh!’ It is my nightmare,” said Laurent Philippon, global artistic director for Bumble & Bumble, in his charming French accent. (Michael Gordon, one of Bumble & Bumble’s original co-founders, famously banned scrunchies from the office). “But actually no,” he added backstage at the show today. “It’s done in a very cool way.”
Philippon gathered select models’ hair into a loose, low ponytail with air-dried texture, which he achieved using a lot of Bumble & Bumble Prep Spray to wet and then shape the hair so that it fell smoothly from a middle part. There were Dyson Supersonics on every table, but none of them were used. “It’s worn very low and broken so you just keep the hair over the ears and behind the shoulders. You tuck part of it behind the ear so it’s a little messy,” he explained.
The Mansur scrunchie, of course, is not the crushed-velvet kind your mom bought you in a stack of five from Costco. Mansur’s scrunchies are made of vintage Italian fabric, but they’re fancy vintage, not ironic vintage. They’re large enough that they can be wrapped around the hair twice without making your pony look like it’s being strangled, yet not so fluffy as to look kitsch or cute. And their texture perfectly complements Mansur’s turtleneck knits, nubby wool coats, and puffy coats.
For all the New York women (or men) who would be caught dead wearing a scrunchie, you can find them in a mix of prints and solid, exclusively sold, for $35, at the Wooster Street store starting tomorrow.