Expert's Opinion

Throwback Hair Trends & Trailblazing Beauty Ingredients for Spring 2026

Vintage hairstyles and champagne brunette hair hues lead for the season.

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By: Philip Pelusi

President

It’s a retro revival for Spring 2026.  This season, nostalgic hair trends emerge but with a futuristic hair conditioning assist from neoteric ingredient technology.  This Spring’s vintage styling resurgence gets us inspired. 

We are now celebrating our 60th year in business and almost that length of time creating haircare products as well.  So, we absolutely love that old Hollywood styles are back in vogue and we’ve added our fresh take on them, like our featured model’s Victory Roll updo incorporating her beautiful natural texture.

Additionally, we also love the results we are seeing and positive feedback from clients and stylists alike about how our styling products do so much more than hold or shape the hair.  Even model’s themselves have shared with us that their hair actually feels better after a day at one of our photoshoots.  So this season’s hair trends really merge those two themes while innovative ingredients take styling products from pretty to performance.

Vintage Hair

The glamorous hairstyles worn by 1940’s silver screen sirens such as Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall and Ava Gardner are being reincarnated with a new modern twist for Spring 2026.  Vintage or retro hairstyles have been on full display on fashion runways and red carpets alike, such as at 2026 Golden Globe Awards.

One of those hallmark styles is the Vintage Sculpted Updo.  For Spring 2026, we see this trend as a 1940’s sculpted updo glam combined with a dash of now popular for 2026, windswept texture.  The look is not perfectly neat and tidy like the 40’s styles but instead has a hint of messy updo to it.  This season’s vintage updos like Victory Rolls, French Twists, Beehives and Bouffants are soft and touchable, elegant and glamorous, yet looser or lived in.

For any updo style, we start with dry hair then apply our Tela Beauty Organics by Philip Pelusi Dri Shampoo spray on to the hair from root to end, working it through textured hair with our hands or brushing it through straight hair to prepare it for crafting.  This gives the hair the perfect amount of texture and volume needed to be shaped.

Tela Dri Shampoo is officially fragrance free but actually makes the hair smell lovely with its aromatherapy ingredient Lavender Essential Oil.  But this light mist does more than make the hair look pretty and smell fresh, it is also all about performance with color protecting antioxidants like oolong tea, wolfberry, reishi mushroom, Chinese foxglove and ku shen.  Plus, our proprietary Hydro Charged Pelusi Ceramide Complex of plant derived ceramides mimicking the lipids found between cuticle layers.  It helps seal each cuticle layer to each other and to the cortex helping seal in color molecules below.  This proprietary mixture strengthens, hydrates, helps protect color and creates shine.  So, we are always “treating” the hair even throughout the stylist process.

If the hair requires it, next we do a hot roller set on dry hair using our P2 by Philip Pelusi Fluid Spray.  Its delicate balance of setting agents and heat protectants makes setting the hair easier while getting the prefect amount of style memory and still remains flexible.  Additional benefits we experience also include easier roller removal resulting in less breakage on the hair plus shine.

Next, to sculpt the hair, we recommend our Tela Beauty Organics by Philip Pelusi Modern Hair Wear Play Freeform Wax as it allows the client or stylist to shape, re-shape, and literally “play” with the hair until the look is perfected.  The end result is beautifully sculpted yet modern looking shapes as opposed to the teased bouffants of yesteryear.  Plus, the hair improving ingredients in this styling wonder is endless.

Our Tela Hair Immunity Complex of probiotics and fermented kelp extract helps improve scalp and hair condition with a combination of pre and probiotics derived from fermented kelp extract.  It is rich in essential minerals, vitamins and amino acids that help strengthen and hydrate the scalp and hair leaving it shiny, full of body, with increased elasticity.  Additionally, kelp is also a key source of antioxidants that help fight oxidation, inflammation of the scalp and help protect color and strength from free radical pollutants.

Tela Play Freeform Wax also contains organic hydrolyzed quinoa protein and the Hydro Charged Pelusi Ceramide Complex to help strengthen, shine, increase body and preserve color.  Plus, USDA certified organic peppermint, milk thistle, honey, aloe and lavender for hydration and weightless heat protection.  And lastly, the Tela USDA certified 35 organic ingredient base blend plus our Tela tea blend of white, green and oolong Tea.

Last to add a glossy finish, we mist on our recently reformulated P2 by Philip Pelusi Brilliant Hair. Now silicone free and vegan, our new P2 Brilliant Hair contains the latest innovations in naturally derived chemistry to replace those silicones.  We achieve this luminous shine plus frizz reduction and sun and anti-color fade protection with the finest cold-pressed organic baobab seed and jojoba oils.

We also added the latest biotech-derived ingredient, Hemisqualane as a key source of antioxidants beneficial to hair color preservation plus moisture and increased shine.  Historically created from animal sources, this Silicone replacement is strictly vegan in that it is derived from biotech plant sources.

Our aforementioned Hydro Charged Pelusi Ceramide Complex has also been added P2 Brilliant Hair plus it contains tomato fruit extract to help fortify hair with vitamins and minerals

And this same wonderful array of products can pull double duty creating another Spring 2026 retro style, the Old Hollywood Bob.  Easily recognizable with its classic smooth sculpted waves, it’s a real glam roller set look.  The styling is more perfect and purposeful.  Groomed with gleaming shine and we are even seeing finger wave details making a comeback. 

Romantic shorter versions of this style are popping up everywhere.  But if you don’t feel like doing a “big chop” haircut, faux bobs, where we pin the hair up from underneath, have also resurged in popularity especially for special occasions.  Lastly, to get any style off to a good start we always like to see clients create a good hair fabric foundation with the right Philip Pelusi shampoos and conditioners to enhance their texture and improve the condition of their hair.

Champagne Brunette

We’ve also combined one of Spring 2026’s hottest color trends to our vintage reduxes, Champagne Brunette.  We love that brunettes continue to get a variation in tone, where this tonal change up is usually reserved for blondes and redheads.  Champagne Blonde’s soft golden teak or wheat tone is present in both the brunette and blondish components of this trend.

The hue calls for medium brunette roots, either natural or via a base break, melding into a lighter midshaft and ends.  It’s sort of a combination of trends coined “Bronde” and “Color Melting” with seamless blending from root to end.  The lighter midshaft and ends are not pinstriped highlights, they should appear to be grown out roots.  Plus Champagne Brunette is part of the overall continuing trend towards low-maintenance color.

To maintain this look, we like every client to have a strong color protecting foundation with a selection Philip Pelusi Shampoos and Conditioners.  Plus we recommend our P2 by Philip Pelusi Violet Orchid Color Boost Color Enhancing Conditioner to help maintain the tonality of their Champagne Brunette.  This product stains the cuticle of the hair with flower derived pigments and there are a couple ways to use this incredible product depending on how strong a cool champagne tonality you want to achieve. 

Apply P2 Violet Orchid all over the blonde and the brunette colors in the hair to give an overall cooled down tone.  Options including, applying it right on top of the application your Philip Pelusi Deep or Instant Conditioner.  This will lower or buffer its staining impact.  Also the longer you leave the product on and the frequency it is applied also can increase its level of color “boosting”.  But this product is so gentle, you can even mix it into your Philip Pelusi styler and apply to clean, conditioned, damp hair then blow-dry onto the hair.  Either way you are able to help that client maintain that neutral to cool tone of the Champagne Brunette trend.

For product recommendations and more information go to www.telabeautyorganics.com and www.philippelusi.com

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