There are few things more frustrating than a major technical issue at the start of an interview. That’s all that was happening for the first 15 minutes I spent with Katseye. Static, a dying laptop battery, frozen cameras, and more plagued our attempt at a video call from the two most different places possible: while the group’s five active members (Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, Yoonchae Jeung, and Sophia Laforteza) are sequestered in a remote dance studio in Los Angeles, rehearsing for their Coachella set on Friday night, I’m at Blackberry Farm in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains.
By the time everybody was coming through loud and clear, the girls are cuddled up on a giant couch in black-and-white dance gear. “We’ve been working for weeks on our performance—9am to 11pm today—because we want it to be as perfect as possible,” Avanzini says. “We’ve been working on some new things, so it’s going to be very different.”
Music isn’t the only thing they’ll be debuting on the Sahara Stage; last week, the group decided it was time for a makeover, and celebrity hairstylist and Matrix global artist George Papanikolas was on hand to make it all happen. (Katseye is a global brand ambassador for the brand, as well.) The change began with Jeung, who, in her own words, has “been wanting to go blonde for a while now and finally convinced our visual creative team”—namely, creative director Humberto Leon and visual director João Moraes.
She cites Pinterest as an important source of inspiration for her golden-blonde makeover: “I don’t even know who the person is in the inspiration photo, I just knew I wanted the colour to have a little bit of yellow,” she says.
From there, it wasn’t long before the rest of the group hopped on the bleach bandwagon, each to totally different ends. “The looks have this natural edge to them because we all have some elements of black hair and some elements of blonde hair, with Yoonchae being completely blonde,” Raj says. That edge, she adds slyly, was “something we wanted to showcase with our new album.”
Raj’s Y2K-style blonde highlights were inspired by another pop music great: Christina Aguilera (or, as Raj calls her, “Xtina”). “The 2000s are an era of music and pop culture that we find really inspiring,” she says. “I’ve always loved the song ‘Dirrty’ and wanted to have those types of streaks in my hair since I was eight. It’s still edgy, but I like that I could keep the black hair around my face and just add in bright little blonde pops.”
It was Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu’s graphic mane that inspired Skiendiel’s makeover. “We decided to do my own version of her shine lines, which almost looks like you just splashed some bleach on my hair and found out what happened,” she says. In reality, the S-shaped curve was far more intentional: Papanikolas shaped it by hand.
“You can tell I really like to experiment with hair from all of our past eras,” Skiendiel adds, citing a ginger phase and hot pink bangs. But this look felt fresh, cool, and of the moment. “I actually got to meet Alysa right after dyeing my hair like this, and I loved that we really look like twins.”
Avanzini and Laforteza’s looks were a little more subtle. “These are extensions!” Laforteza gushes of her dip-dye look, which almost inverts Debbie Harry’s iconic two-tone grunge-glam ’do of the late ’70s. The platinum extensions that peek out from beneath her glossy black hair added major inches without altering her hair routine too much. “I love hair masks and glosses, so I had them darken my natural hair, which I’m just drenching in Matrix hair masks,” Laforteza says. “Then, when it’s time to perform, I just get to add in the extensions, and I feel like Hannah Montana when she puts the wig on. I can take it off and be Miley, be Sophia, be myself. But when I go home, I still get to be myself. It was the perfect way for me to still be a part of the blonde.”
For naturally curly-haired Avanzini—whose spirals have become part of her beauty signature—less was more: two pert platinum money pieces now frame her face. “I’ve been blonde before, and while I miss it, I really love my dark hair,” she says. “This was a way to bring back just a little bit of my past blonde era, but in a subtle way.” She’s excited to style the pieces into braids, an updo, and more.
As we’re chatting, Jeung shares that while she’s obsessed with her makeover, the look is also taking a moment to get used to. “I also chose to bleach my eyebrows,” she says. “So when I don’t have makeup on and walk by a mirror, it’s like seeing an entirely different face.”
Regardless of the extent of the makeover, Papanikolas says that one thing remained top of mind: keeping each girl’s hair healthy. “Any time you’re lightening your hair, you’re putting it through stress,” he says. To combat that, each girl was sent home with the Matrix Build-A-Bond mask and instructions to use it weekly. “It will keep their hair strong and soft, which the girls need because of all the hair choreography.”
If you’re wondering why the weeks before Coachella—one of their most exciting career milestones to date—felt like the right time for a big change, Skiendiel has the answer: “We love to play around with our concepts with every era of Katseye. It’s something that’s really prominent from SIS to Beautiful Chaos. ‘Pinky Up’ is our third comeback.” Only time—and their Coachella set—will tell what they have in store.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
