While we're enjoying the playful return of Y2K streaky highlights, there is still room in our hair hearts for the yin to its yang(? Or is it the chalk to its cheese?). Where streaky highlights paint bold stripes in the hair, golden hour highlights do their best to pretend they're not there at all.
The artful colouring technique captures the way sunlight bathes the hair in a warm, soft glow during that precious fleeting sunset window of uber-flattering 'golden hour'. It allows the wearer to have that 'floated-to-earth-on-a-sun-beam' effect – and Kaia Gerber is a prime example. Just look at this new pic, posted by her hairstylist Kiley Fitzgerald:
The hue of her tousled brunette waves looks so natural and effortless, while still slyly benefitting from some clever colouring. The trend goes further than soft multi-tonal highlights, or subtle balayage, in that it's hard to identify where the colour is at all; to differentiate between dye, and light hitting the hair. Which is exactly the goal.
Given how popular the liquid brunette trend for dark hair has been over the winter, a trend that focuses on super subtle tone variation for gloss and depth, we're betting this summer will be dominated by golden hour highlights. It's the no-makeup makeup of hair, and ties in very naturally to the enduring 'clean girl' aesthetic.
Now if we could just find a way for our face to look like it was always golden hour...
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Elena Chabo is Cosmopolitan UK's former beauty writer, working on everything from buzzy celeb news and trending beauty, to sincere first-person reviews and engaging video content for social media. She also creates meatier features and expert-led how-to guides, for print and online. Her passion for Black beauty, textured hair, and the ways beauty interacts with culture, society, identity and relationships, quickly took over her writing career and led her into beauty journalism. Following an MA in Magazine Journalism in 2017, she cut her teeth across various roles at Stylist Magazine, before taking on a Digital Writer role at Good Housekeeping. It was here that beauty took centre stage and she launched and ran the site's first stand-alone beauty section. Remaining at Hearst, she joined the Cosmo beauty team in 2022. Find her on LinkedIn.
