Chameleon Hair: How hair's materiality affects its fashionability

This article seeks to explore the changeable materiality of hair. Drawing upon the archaeological concept of the palimpsest, as an inimitable material record, it illuminates how hair’s chameleon abilities are the foundation upon which the contemporary hair fashion industry resides. As Nigel Thrift (2008: 19) notes, hair ‘is the easiest part of the body to alter. It grows so must be cut.’ However, paradoxically it is hair’s very materiality which also inhibits its conformity to certain fashions. Whilst hair may appear to have chameleon materiality, it has multiple temporalities and as this article argues is all at once changing, changed, yet with constant features.