IRIDESCENT ©️ Emma Moreton
IRIDESCENT©
The Identity Collection
Blues, Greens & Sacred Geometry — Alternative Hair in Haute Couture
Some styles only exist in one photograph. This is one of them.
IRIDESCENT© was created on Emma Moreton at Daisy's Hair Shop in Nuneaton. A textured, spiky mullet — short and spiked through the crown, longer and layered through the sides and nape — with sections of turquoise, teal, blue and green running through a dark base, interspersed with faded blonde panels that let the colours bleed into each other. In different lights, it shifted and changed like oil on water. Iridescent in the truest sense.
The colour was mixed by Fudge, applied to pre-lightened sections through the dark base. The blonde panels were left deliberately soft rather than taken to a clean white, so that when the blues and greens bled across them the transition felt organic, not hard-edged. That's what gave the piece its shifting quality — the colours were never quite the same twice, depending on where the light caught them.
Emma was vivacious, alternative, funky — and this style suited her completely. She always looked striking. Not styled-into-striking. Just striking, as herself.
The only photograph that survived of this piece was taken in the garden at the salon, after Emma's hair had been washed through several times, and without her usual clothing or styling. A snapshot, not a shoot. And yet even there, half-faded and out of context, you can still see it: the colour, the cut, the presence.
That's the injustice of it. Alternative hairstyles deserve to be shown in glamour and haute couture just as much as any conventional style — and so rarely are. This piece, this document, this blog post, is that correction. Emma deserved an editorial setting the first time round, and she has one now.
And what's just as true — she still deserves it. Emma's hair is still in good hands. These days it's cut by Nigel, a professional stylist with his own salon in Warwickshire, and whatever he does works — she still looks funky. Nigel and I worked together back in the nineties and were good friend's outside the salon too, always having a laugh. It's only right to give him a mention here. This piece was never meant to be about just me — it's about everyone who's had a hand in Emma looking like herself over the years.
The Sacred Geometry
Look closely at the crown of IRIDESCENT© and there's a signature detail — a petal formation radiating outward from the apex of the head, created through point cutting and texturising around a central point. It echoes the Flower of Life, one of the oldest patterns in human visual culture — overlapping circles found in ancient temples and sacred sites across centuries, from the Temple of Osiris at Abydos to Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Each circle a cell, a seed, a beginning; each overlap a relationship.
The petal formation here doesn't claim perfect mathematical symmetry — it's symbolic, not literal. But the echo is unmistakable. A haircut that, without ever meaning to, reached for something ancient.
Hair & Creative Direction Remastered AI: Karen Tonks | Colours: Fudge
Model: Emma Moreton | Daisy's Hair Shop, Nuneaton
