hair stylist behind marc jacobs “dreadlocks” now realizes it was appropriation (but still downplays it)

Legendary hairstylist Guido Palau, the man behind the iconic looks in George Michaels’ ‘Freedom’ video and bringing grunge into high fashion is also the same Guido Palau who brought up 55 (predominantly white) Mark Jacobs models wearing arts and crafts dreadlocks down the runway. It’s been two years since the “show” and, in a recent interview, Palau says he now realizes why the styling choice went over as badly as it did: “Looking back, I’m not actually surprised. At the time, I was a little bit[…]Now, I would see it much differently. Maybe I was naïve. But to me, it was about style. I feel like when you’re a creative person, you take style from everywhere.”

Okay, sounds good…

“I read the comments about appropriation. You never want to upset people. That’s not the idea of fashion. But I think sometimes people misread what other people are doing.”

It’s not his fault, you see, it’s everyone else!

“The style of it was rastafarian, in its purest form.” Thin white girls wearing thousands of dollars in clothing at a white tent fashion show? Really?

But he wasn’t done. “The truth of it was rastafarian, and [the rastas] had appropriated it in different ways along the decades. I appropriated it from that and not from its origins. That’s not making an excuse, but that’s how it came together.”

Because cultural exchange between spiritual movements and heritage is just as valid as removing those customs from their sacred context to place them in a commercial fashion show for purposes that are contradictory to the cultures in which they are from. Sigh.

Palau had more thoughts about appropriation to share in the interview, you can eye-roll through them, here.

I guess an “I’m sorry, I was ignorant” was too much to ask.