Why This Dutch Model’s Surreal Curls Are Ruling the Runways
While paging through Céline’s Pre-Fall 2016 lookbook, amid all the covetable silk shifts and jewel-toned suede, an envy-inducing head of curls caught our eye—one that we’d seen coasting down the runway at some 30 shows last season, peeping over a jacquard blazer at Altuzarra and teased into extreme proportions at Dolce & Gabbana. That unruly mane belongs to Nirvana Naves, a 20-year-old Dutch-Guyanese up-and-comer, whose dreamlike ringlets are poised for an industry takeover.
“It was all surreal,” Naves tells me of her explosive first season—opening J.W.Anderson, followed by a Prada exclusive. She’s calling from a small café in Amsterdam’s Jordaan District, not far from the city of Purmerend, where she was born and raised, to discuss the head-turning hair that, Naves says, she inherited from her father: “It’s quite funny; people expect that I got my curls from my mom, who’s from South America, but they’re from my dad, who is Dutch.”
Smartly, Naves has never tried to tame them—and is thrilled that designers are embracing a come-as-you-are approach on the runway. “Natural curls are so beautiful; I don’t see the point in having to straighten them,” she says matter-of-factly. The upkeep is equally fuss-free: Wash in the morning, never at night (“If I sleep on wet hair, it forms in very weird shapes”), followed by a hands-off air-dry. “I put a little bit of almond oil on my fingertips and touch it a bit at the ends, but then I just let it air-dry and don’t touch it again,” she says. “With curly hair, you have to let it be and it will figure itself out.”
Sound advice—and with her graduation from the University of Amsterdam set for next week, Naves is ready to take her mane on the road. “I’ll be doing full-time modeling now!” she says happily (yes, now). Those curls will be everywhere come fall.