Southern Fashion Explained
by Julia Reed

A few months ago, I wrote a story for Vogue in which I made the point that where you come from dictates the style of your hair. To prove it, a fashion editor and I dragged a German model named Georgia to four cities around the country and had the locals in each place do her hair and makeup, and then we dressed her up and took her out and photographed the results. It’s the kind of story I like. It’s not rocket science and it doesn’t take long. It even worked. Georgia’s makeover in each spot proved that regional character endures despite tiresome theories to the contrary. In Palm Beach she looked like a tanned blonde socialite, in Minneapolis she was clean and wholesome, in Manhattan trendy and severe in 60’s hair and bloodred lips. But it was in Memphis that everybody said she looked the best: all soft and pink and gold tinged, dressed in high, high heels and the full skirted dresses of the season, her curls pulled up loosely off her face. And it was Memphis that got me in trouble. Of course, the finished product is full of nuances. In Memphis the hairdresser who worked on Georgia kept telling me that the operative word was soft: soft haircut, soft hair color, soft hairstyle, soft makeup, soft nail color. “No matter what I say,” he told me, “you will hear me finish with the word soft.” This guy runs the most popular hair salon in Memphis. Women from Arkansas and Missouri, half of Tennessee, and most of the Mississippi Delta flock to him to acquire this softness, which make perfect sense. I have long held the belief that one reason Southern women aspire to look softer than Yankees is that they are in fact stronger, and it is far more effective to dress like the magnolia and not the steel.