As 2023 comes to a close, Allure dives into those moments when beauty took center stage this year: the trends, the people, and the technologies that filled our feeds and captured our imaginations. As always, we’re here to chronicle, to celebrate, and to make sense of it all — or at least try. Welcome to the Year in Beauty.
If every cultural epoch has its own emblematic hairstyle, the style for the time we are living in right now is smooth and taut, pulled or yanked or gelled, tied off, knotted, or sculpted behind the head. A bun for all — an everybun, if you will. There are center parts, side parts, and no parts, but a degree of slickness is nonnegotiable, even in the slightest, like rain on asphalt.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you may be lying to yourself — didn’t you see Sofia Richie’s wedding pictures? If every year has its own emblematic ritual union, Richie’s took the (wedding) cake for 2023. She wore three different dresses, all Chanel, two of them with her hair styled in an everybun, and a fun ponytail for the reception. The event had everything else too: nepo babies, relentless TikTok coverage, the South of France, a chandelier made of orchids, Princess Olympia of Greece. And there were everybuns on everyone: the bride, the maid of honor, a bridesmaid, several guests. (Princess Olympia wore a sharp blonde bob.)
The everybun reaches, magnanimously, across occasions. The look is at home on any red carpet, it’s great for celebrity and civilian weddings alike — it has featured prominently in every other betrothal I’ve been to this year — but also looks at home resting against the back of a sofa. The median occasion for an everybun is, probably, a Zoom meeting with a client or vendor. Before the pandemic, remote employees comprised less than 10% of the workforce; that figure now hovers around 30%, according to data from Stanford University.