With her shock of pink hair, American model Charlotte Free has been brightening up the catwalk like a Stabilo highlighter.
The modelling world is undoubtedly transforming into a much more democratic arena; after years of seemingly blank and unmemorable teenage faces stalking the runways, vanishing into the abyss after a mere season, a personality with a unique selling point is the new vogue.
Pink hair: the hottest hair trend
In the space of just a few months we've enjoyed the emergence of the transsexual Brazilian in possession of the most enviable pair of legs in the industry ( Lea T ); the man with a skeleton tattooed over his entire frame ( Rico , handpicked by Nicola Formichetti at Mugler); the Serbian boy with a deceptively girly face and hourglass physique (Andrej Pejic ); and now the girl with the pink hair, Charlotte Free.
Fashion blurs gender boundaries
The 18-year-old model from Los Angeles was 'discovered' while shopping in an arcade, and pouring through endless catwalk images from the autumn/winter 2011 season, it is easy to see why her platinum-bleached and fluorescent-dyed hair makes her so incongruous.
Free's pink mane caught Dame Vivienne Westwood's eye, who chose her to open her Red Label collection at London Fashion Week. At Topshop Unique, where every model's hair was tightly-styled into two top-knots, Free's pink variation was the quirkiest of them all.
What makes Free's USP all the more endearing is learning that she dyes her hair herself, bleaching and colouring it from the comfort of her own home.
This autumn/winter 2011 show season is seeing the American picking up bookings day after day. At New York Fashion Week her spunky pigtails were on display at Jeremy Scott; she peppered her 5ft7" presence throughout London and now she's in Paris, where our hair-watch continues.
