The head as a portal
Before we speak, our heads are already saying something. Our entire bodies are instruments of nonverbal communication, pulsing with messages, and hair is among the most expressive and codified parts.
In many African cultures, the head is sacred ground, and hair its oracle. In the Bashi tribe in the Eastern Congolese region of Kivu, my grandfather has watched hairstyles cycle over time, from women shaving their heads and tracing them with symmetrical shapes, to intricate braiding, to the rising presence of wigs as Western beauty standards infiltrate. Hair reflects the evolving, interconnected global body.
In West African Yoruba philosophy, the concept of Orí (head) is vital. It is considered not only as the physical head, but as the seat of one’s spiritual essence and destiny, a portal. It is deemed the most important part of the body and is often depicted disproportionately large in traditional sculpture to reflect this. And rightfully so, as the carrier of one’s wisdom, destiny, and selfhood.
Hair as aesthetic philosophy
Ajíbóyè et al. approach Orí as a lens into Yoruba aesthetic thinking, tracing its depiction in ritual and language. Aesthetics, they argue, emerge from the same belief systems that shape values and spirituality. What we find beautiful is never separate from what we believe.
Building on this, Abíọ́dún defines ẹwà (beauty) as inseparable from ìwà (character). True beauty lies in ìwàpẹ̀lẹ, moral and spiritual coolness that emerges when self-control and spirituality align. This harmony is visible not only in art but in the body, through braiding, adornments and ritualized styling.
Ajíbóyè et al. go further, turning to the act of hair weaving itself. In Yoruba tradition, the act of braiding is not neutral. The braid is a meticulous sculpture that requires consciousness. All five qualities of ìwàpẹ̀lẹ are necessary to successfully divide the hair and execute the design. Like old stories, braiding techniques settle into muscle memory and are passed down through generations. Here, the act of braiding is a theurgy. A braid done by a knowing hand arranges fate.
And perhaps this is true across cultures. Perhaps any aesthetic act, when practiced intentionally and memorised in the body, connects us to primordial ceremony.
Cultural codes in contemporary fashion
But what happens when these symbolic systems are lifted from their original context and reappear, abstracted, on Western fashion runways?
McQueen’s 2000 ready-to-wear collection Eshu is named after the Yoruba deity of chance, uncertainty, and duality. In Yoruba cosmology, Eshu is a mediator in spiritual communication. He moves between realms: earth and spirit, order and chaos, joy and despair. Eshu’s form is fluid: in some depictions male, in others female, or somewhere in between. Eshu is not just an isolated figure, but a constant presence in Yoruba cosmology, sculpture, and proverbs. To invoke him is to touch an entire spiritual system.
Though McQueen’s Eshu collection did not try to explain this deity, his avatars did conjure something. Horsehair, a significant material in Yoruba ritual objects, was stitched into coats and headdresses, heads covered with a thick, muddy paint. But Yoruba culture was not consistently present in the collection, despite what the title implied. Other details like stacked necklaces hinted at tradition, but were culturally unspecific. For those familiar with Yoruba visual language, the collection may just conjure confusion. Barbara Steinberg (2025) calls Eshu a self-portrait of McQueen’s own chaos. The scattered use of lip plates, piercings, and beadwork makes the collection feel like a fantastical cherry-pick of African symbols rather than a reflection of Yoruba deities.
And yet, something survives in spirit. McQueen’s collection, though inaccurate, still gestures toward Eshu’s in-betweenness. His work was often deeply personal; here unanchored symbols of “Africa” seem less an interpretation of Yoruba cosmology than an externalisation of his own intrigue and disruption.
But a symbol alone cannot sustain meaning. Hair, however simple it may seem, belongs to a complex cultural code.
In fashion, slow, round, generational meaning is often flattened into image. Fragments of tradition are lifted and rearranged. A strand of horsehair stitched into a coat may allude to cultural symbols, but without the spiritual framework or community to interpret it, its power becomes ambiguous. Open to beauty, yes, but also to misreading. Some may call this creative evolution; others, cultural dilution. Maybe meaning survives reassembly, but who controls that transformation, and what is left out of its retelling ?
This complex interplay between hair, meaning, and reassembly appears in other works as well. Junya Watanabe’s structuralist headpieces, made with hairstylist Katsuya Kamo, draw from traditional Japanese paper folding and architecture. Iris van Herpen sculpts hair into organic spirals that mirror fungal networks and uses 3D-printed hair-like elements, blending technology with nature to create hair that is both ancestral and futuristic. Both designers turn hair into speculative material that is part future, part physical world, and part memory.
What hair knows
Depictions of hair, and all aesthetic details, are belief systems made visible. A hairstyle knows things and speaks. If we listen, we can make out stories of lineage, spirituality, and rebellion.
And these stories are not abstract. Cornrows encoded escape strategies during the transatlantic slave trade and served as a hidden system for storing rice under colonial rule. In traditional Fulani culture, a hairstyle is a map: it marks regions, ceremonies, and rites of passage. It also signals life stages: a close haircut announces a newly married man. Hair is a message in courtship, where metal ornaments worn at market days communicate desire. The more glittering the headdress, the more desirable the boy.
Hair is able to mediate both function and meaning. Nigerian Fulani nomad women often have elaborate braids framing the sides and back of the head, while the top is kept free to carry head loads. Chonmage, the original topknot worn by samurais in feudal Japan, survives today among sumo wrestlers: a practical hair choice transformed into a symbol of discipline. Sikh turbans, called dastaar, convey a profound spiritual authority, symbolizing altruism, honor, and commitment across generations.
During the American and British punk rebellion of the 1970s, hair was a scream. Hairstyles became extensions of anger and alienation. Safety pins, shaved heads, and neon spikes derailed natural order, declaring “I don’t belong here and I don’t want to.” Hair offered a playground for gender, where binaries could be softened and reimagined.
Edges, afros, buzz cuts, braids, mohawks, head coverings, and dreadlocks emerge from modes of cultural engineering. They mumble and scream our values and histories back to us. Fashion often communicates through hair, but sometimes its codes rely on the contexts that give them depth. Stripped of these roots, hair risks being seen as mere decoration rather than the complex, deeply coded language it truly is.
Credits
written by Zaina Pakabomba @zigggyp