Fashion has a habit of
rescuing objects we swore we had outgrown, but few rescues have
felt as improbable as this one. The zig-zag
headband, also known as the comb headband, that stretchy,
toothed band of black plastic last seen at middle-school soccer
practice and in every locker-lined hallway of the late ’90s, is
officially the hair accessory of the season. The
anointment came from the highest possible authority. At the
Miu Miu fall 2026 show in Paris, Miuccia Prada
sent a parade of models down the Palais d’Iéna runway wearing the
serrated little band, and by the time the finale walked, a $5
drugstore staple had been transformed into the most talked-about
beauty moment of the month. This summer, it is everywhere, and the
story of how it got here says everything about the way nostalgia
now moves through fashion.
The genius of the Miu
Miu moment lay in its casting. Hairstylist Guido
Palau placed the wavy band on loose, undone hair across
both female and male models, using it sometimes to pull long
lengths off the face, as on Gemma Ward, and sometimes as pure
ornament on cropped, spiked cuts, proof the piece had graduated
from utility to statement. But it was the Gen X goddesses who
sealed the deal: Chloë Sevigny wore it with a
black leather jacket and minidress, Kristen McMenamy added her own
imperious spin, and Gillian Anderson closed the
show in a sequin-embroidered buttercream dress with the band
nestled in her blond layers. Then came the detail that launched a
thousand posts. Anderson and Sevigny simply kept their headbands
on, wearing them through their post-show wanderings around Paris,
with Anderson still sporting hers at the Miu Miu dinner that
evening. Models were photographed leaving the venue with theirs
too. When a runway prop refuses to be returned to the accessories
table, a trend is no longer a proposal; it is a fact.
The zig-zag band arrives
trailing an impeccable pop-culture pedigree. It framed Cher’s face
in Clueless and Willow’s in Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, ruled the halls of Lizzie McGuire and the
pitch of Bend It Like Beckham, and was worn by Britney
Spears, Paris Hilton and even David Beckham at the height of its
first reign. Nor has it ever fully slept: Helmut Lang revived it on
the runway in 2014, Amy Adams wore one to a premiere the year
before, Bella Hadid slipped it on in 2022 and Alexa Demie gave it
the Euphoria treatment. Its current return, though,
belongs to a larger movement.
The ’90s beauty
resurgence has traded bronzy glam for matte contour and
vampy lips, and headbands of every species are having a moment: Gen
Z has been mobbing C.O. Bigelow, Manhattan’s oldest apothecary, for
the wide tortoise acetate bands beloved by Carolyn
Bessette-Kennedy, while satin and embellished versions
surfaced at Carolina Herrera and Simone Rocha. What Miu Miu did was
democratize the frenzy. Where the CBK band carries the weight of
quiet luxury, the zig-zag comb costs about five dollars, works on
every hair texture and takes exactly one second to apply. That may
be the real lesson of the summer’s most stylish comeback: after
seasons of aspirational polish, the chicest gesture is the one that
looks like you grabbed it from your teenage bedroom drawer on the
way out the door.
