Coachella has travelled far from its roots as a grungy music festival to something more like a free for all fashion show. It usually comes with a wave of free spirited behavior, so when people change their hair for it they’re looking for two simple things: Easy maintenance and a lot more color. Fashion bloggers and Youtubers the world over travel to southern California adorned in meticulously planned outfits, some of them getting their hair ready weeks in advance. So the festival season is really a time for people like James Miju and the team at Miju Van Salon to shine.
Braids and flowers are a staple of festivals, especially Coachella, but this year the trend leaned more toward pigtails, double buns, and unicorn colors, which is exactly the kind of thing these artists excel at.
Miju set the tone with this kaleidescope of unicorn inspiration alongside Sammi Wang. Many of the colors that came out of Miju Van for the weekend were much darker. Maybe because black and dark red feel cooler in the sun. Or maybe the profusion of bright vivid rainbows in hair styling the last couple years has created a space for dark, multi-toned colors to be edgy. Whatever the reason, they played with that trend perfectly.
Fashion vlogger Karen Yeung has been one of Miju’s clients for a while now so her hair is in good shape. That’s in part because she takes great care of it, so it’s healthy enough for her and Miju to try pretty much anything. She came to this glowering black and pink bob from a cold steel gray, which is a pretty extreme transition. But the combination of Yueng’s passionate approach to fashion and Miju’s unique mentality with hair coloring is bound to produce some pretty extreme hairstyles in the future.
Cydnee Black (on the left) went full on pink thanks to the careful genius of Tim Kim. No light task considering she started with level 9 or 10 hair. But like her contemporary Karen Yeung, Cydnee has very healthy hair, so Tim was able to take her all the way to blonde and finish off with the pink blend while keeping the hair silky and shiny. If you follow Miju Van you’ve probably seen them doing a lot of pink work lately. We don’t know if this is a growing summer trend or just something their clients in particular want, but we do know that everyone in Miju Van Salon is very good at it.
Left to right: Before and after Coachella
This color took some forethought. Miju actually colored the hair in deeper shades about a week or so before Coachella so the color would have time to fade into its proper tone when the big weekend arrived. It’s in keeping with Miju’s shift in unicorn hair to darker tones the last few weeks. Rainbow color hair turned darkly passionate feels like an appropriate direction for festival season in a year where emotions in every corner of the country seem to be on the rise.
You can always count on the artists at Miju Van to create something spectacular, but we especially appreciate them bringing something new to Coachella this year. In a place where everyone strives to be wild and different, it’s refreshing to see them send people out there in hair that actually feels unique. There’s a lot that can be said about the artwork coming out of Miju Van Salon right now, but it’s really best to appreciate it by looking at it. So we encourage you to follow both Miju Van and James Miju if you’d like a regular dose of wispy inspiration.