Walking straight out of bed and into the street without stopping in front of a mirror or reaching for a brush has become one of summer 2026’s most visible fashion trends.
Thousands of Instagram videos now demonstrate how to create deliberately messy hair, while fashion houses are sending models down the runway with loose strands, flyaways and styles designed to look almost untouched.
Prada, fall-winter 2026-27 collection
(Photo: AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
The old-new trend has several names. It is called messy hair, bedhead style and, in the latest language of social media, “depression hair,” a deliberately neglected look intended to resemble hair shaped by exhaustion, low energy or emotional burnout.
Prada, fall-winter 2026-27 collection
(Photo: Marco M. Mantovani/Getty Images)
At Prada’s fall-winter 2026-27 show during Milan Fashion Week in February, models walked the runway with loosely gathered hair, electrified-looking ends and dark eye makeup. Stella McCartney also presented several models with loose, intentionally uncombed hair. The natural, nonchalant styling was balanced by sharply tailored suits.
Stella McCartney, fall-winter 2026-27 collection
(Photo: Aurore Marechal/Getty Images)
Stella McCartney, fall-winter 2025-26 collection
(Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
At fashion weeks in London and New York, several brands created a similar feeling of disorder by using hair that appeared "unfinished" rather than cleanly styled.
Collina Strada’s models wore messy hair that reflected the collection’s broader mood. Coach did the same alongside clothes inspired by luxury grunge, a contradiction that captures what happens when high-end labels adopt a deliberately dirty-looking street aesthetic.
Collina Strada fashion show
Coach fashion show
Hillary Taymour, the designer behind Collina Strada, told The New York Times’ T Magazine that the styling helps offset heavily detailed clothing. “When you’re wearing something that’s a lot, undone hair makes it feel less offensive," she said.
For the look to work, she added, the wearer must also adopt the appropriate attitude. “Your face has to look like you don’t care or it doesn’t work,” she says.
Sinead Gorey, fall-winter 2026-27 collection
(Photo: Kate Green/Getty Images)
Celebrity hairstylist Guido Palau, who styled the hair for Prada’s show, argued that messy hair does not communicate neglect but signals precisely the opposite, describing the look as “weirdly bourgeois” and luxury that does not try to impress. “If you’re wearing the most beautiful cashmere jumper and it costs a fortune, you want people to know but not to know,” he told T Magazine.
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy
In his view, the deliberately wild hair represents a form of “inverted snobbery,” signaling luxury through calculated effortlessness. Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy embodied that aesthetic, with her unpolished hair becoming one of her defining trademarks. It is no coincidence that the trend has resurfaced alongside renewed fashion interest in her life and relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr., following the release of a TV series about the couple.
More than a hairstyle
The “messy girl” microtrend is a direct reaction against the clean aesthetic that dominated fashion in recent years, including the whisper-soft world of quiet luxury.
Disheveled hair is designed to look responsive to real life rather than fixed in place. It offers the appearance of rebellion and effortlessness, as seen at the London Fashion Week shows of Simone Rocha and Sinead Gorey.
Simone Rocha fashion show
The trend is also rooted in nostalgia. During the 1990s, grunge fashion popularized unwashed-looking hair and deliberately worn-down clothing as a rejection of the polished, logo-heavy styles that had dominated the previous decade. The best way to adopt the current trend is to treat it not as a hairstyle, but as an attitude.
Di Petsa, fall-winter 2026-27 collection
(Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images)
Instagram tutorials for messy hairstyles are going viral
Technically, social media tutorials can help achieve the right effect. The aim is to avoid styling the hair too precisely and instead preserve its natural texture, with a little volume and visible movement.
Salt spray, a small amount of mousse or styling cream can create the desired lived-in effect, making it appear as though the wind did the work rather than a carefully calculated session in front of the mirror.