Calico Hair Is 2024's Fastest-Growing Beauty Trend

The pack of animal-inspired hair trends continues to grow as “calico hair” is the latest look to, um, set the cat among the pigeons(?) following the success of the wolf cut, the butterfly cut, the jellyfish cut, and the kitty cut.

The trend for calico hair has seen a 6500% surge in searches this year, according to Pinterest's Summer 2024 Trend Report, as more insiders jump on to the renegade hairspo. So, here's what you need to know about it.

What is calico hair?

Inspired by the distinctive coloring of a calico cat, the hair trend sees red, brunette, and blonde hair colors blended to create an edge – and very individual – look.

Why choose calico hair?

Rebel hair trends have seen a real resurgence over the past few years, with celebrities like Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus leading the charge. When Miley reclaimed the '70s shag back in 2020, people we skeptical, but since then, the style has gone mainstream with spin-offs like the wolf cut and even heavily layered cuts like The Rachel leading trends.

Calico hair is set to do the same for color trends, and we expect to see more of the look to varying extremes. Essentially, it's an amped-up take on 2000s chunky highlights (which, incidentally, also saw a 5400% boom in searches in Pinterest’s Summer 2024 Trend Report).

How to wear calico hair?

You can go extreme with high-contrast red, brunette, and blonde stripes, but we also expect to see softer takes. Miley Cyrus (always an early adopter) unveiled her own gentler rendition of the trend for her cover with W Mag. In one picture, it looks like she just has warm, chunky, noughties highlights, but in another picture, you can see more defined highlights through her fringe and around her face. And instead of going for contrast, she brought each shade much closer to each other, swapping out fire engine red for an ambery auburn, black brunette for mid-toned toffee, and bleached highlights for honey tones.

We also love how one creator, Sydney Lou, accidentally landed on her calico hair. “This is for all the calico hair girlies out there. I have a simple life hack for you because I think I perfected the technique," Sydney says. "All you have to do is start out with natural, basically jet-black Asian hair and then just bleach it yourself. Do it poorly with bleach and developer that you probably should have thrown out six months ago. Be sure to try foils and then make sure that they slip out halfway through. Have your boyfriend help you, and then just trust him. Probably don't leave them on for long enough, and I promise you, you will get calico hair.”

She reasoned, “I personally think it's the most accurate representation of a calico cat – the unique patterning – because when you see a calico cat, they don't have nice uniform stripes. I would describe them as ‘spotty’. If you just follow everything I just said, I promise you, you will get this fun, unique calico cat look that only nature or hubris can provide.”

Many in the comments pointed out the colour correction would not be for the faint of heart, but if you love an experimental hair look (it's hair, you can dye it, cut it and it'll grown back), this could be one for you.

Here are 5 of our favorite ways to wear to wear calico hair:

This story first appeared in Glamour UK.