From romantic braided texture to raw & dishevelled.
Published:Revlon Professional UK & Ireland Artistic Director Danilo Giangreco created a four-stage hair story for Dreaming Eli’s SS27 collection, moving from romantic braided texture to raw, dishevelled styles as the show explored the transition from childhood dreams to adult reality.
For Spring/Summer 2027, Dreaming Eli presented Dreamers in Exile, a collection examining the journey from the idealised dreams of childhood to the realities inherited through adulthood.
Giangreco translated the narrative into an evolving sequence of hair looks, using braiding, texture and controlled dishevelment to reflect the changing mood of the collection.
Rather than treating the four stages as separate hairstyles, Giangreco approached the hair as one continuous story. The looks began with a romantic, nostalgic quality before becoming increasingly intricate and undone, moving into darker and more rebellious territory before returning to a sense of childhood wonder.
“The starting point was this idea of childhood dreams and the idealised world we create around them. I wanted the hair to feel romantic and quite beautiful at the beginning, but then gradually lose that control as the characters move into adulthood,” – Giangreco.
The show opened with textured, braided semi-up styles, establishing the youthful and romantic mood of the collection.
The braiding provided structure while retaining a tactile, imperfect finish. Rather than being polished or overly precise, the hair maintained movement and texture, giving the looks a nostalgic quality while suggesting that the dreamlike world was beginning to unravel.
As the show progressed, Giangreco increased both the braiding and texture. The semi-up silhouette remained, but the styling became more intricate and increasingly undone, with texture building through the lengths.
“The braid almost becomes a representation of the memories and dreams that we carry with us. At first it is quite controlled and romantic, but as the story develops it starts to break apart,” – Giangreco.
He said retaining the same hair and allowing it to evolve was important to the overall concept, rather than introducing a completely different style at each stage of the show.
The turning point came as the collection moved into a darker and more rebellious phase, with Giangreco drawing inspiration from tattoos and the techno underground.
At this point, the structure around the crown was stripped back, with the braiding giving way to loose sections of disrupted hair.
He explains that this is where the hair really enters the underground world.
“We lose the neatness of the braid around the crown and start breaking everything up. It becomes much more instinctive, almost as though the hair has been disturbed rather than styled.”
For the final looks, the semi-up silhouette returned, but with a noticeably less controlled finish. The braids became looser and the texture more abundant, carrying the imperfections of the preceding stages into the final look.
Giangreco said the hair was deliberately not returned to its original polished state.
“I didn’t want the final hair to go back to being perfect. It must show everything that has happened. We bring back the romance and the braid, but it is looser, messier and more lived-in.”
The finished hair story therefore mirrors the narrative of Dreamers in Exile, moving from innocence and romanticism through disruption and rebellion before arriving at a rediscovered sense of childhood wonder, while retaining the texture and imperfections of the journey.
A hair story that moved seamlessly through the collection from innocence to disruption and finally to rediscovery. See more styles from the show on Instagram @dreaming_eli.
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