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Zara Larsson loves color, glitter, and fun. Her aesthetic is pure pop girl energy with a splash of Lisa Frank: tons of aqua blues, purples, and, of course, bright Barbie pink! But for her Allure cover shoot, she swapped the pink makeup and neon wardrobe for metallic silver and minimalist black and white and wore pink in her hair instead.
According to hairstylist Iggy Rosales, who worked with Larsson and makeup artist Sophia Sinot on the cover, the mood board was based on “a modern ’50s pinup with a bit of a 2000s influence: sexy, playful, and a little fantasy.” Rosales praised photographer Hugo Comte's “specific eye for color and how everything comes together in an image" and said that he, Sinot, and stylist Ronald Burton III played with a few different color combos throughout the shoot. But when it came to her hair, they stuck to platinum and pink—a fun departure from Larsson's current bright, golden blonde.
“Zara just makes sense as a pink-haired girl,” Rosales tells Allure. “It was part of the mood board from the beginning.” But there were very specific shades of pink in mind for the cover, so Rosales came prepared with a plethora of wig options. “We liked the slightly more muted, dusty pinks, but I still brought about 10 or 12 wigs in different shades so we could try them. Once we saw them on Zara, we gravitated toward the sleeker, more graphic shapes. The soft pink and platinum worked really well against those sharper shapes."
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Larsson wears a few pink styles for the shoot: a center-parted lob in a salmon-y hue; a choppy, chin-length lob with long bangs; and a similar jawline-skimming blonde crop that fades to the subtlest blush of baby pink.
Rosales's favorite of the bunch is the pink bob with bangs, which the star wears on the in-motion cover, because it's “a different look for her, but it feels so Zara.” He also saluted Larsson's anything-goes approach to her glam. “Zara was super down to experiment, which is what makes shoots like this so fun,” Rosales said. “Having the freedom to step outside someone’s usual look keeps things inspiring. You never know what you’ll end up loving!”
Larsson told Allure that she's always thrilled to see fans wearing colorful, glittery makeup to her shows. It's yet another way she and her creative team have turned the Midnight Sun album into an aesthetic, and then a universe. “It makes me so fucking happy to look out into the crowd or even in my tagged photos on Instagram, and I see that people do the makeup—they wear the glitter, they have a little dolphin," she says. “People are tapped into the artistry of it."
Photographed by Hugo Comte
Stylist: Ronald Burton III
Hair: Iggy Rosales
Makeup: Sophia Sinot
Manicure: Juan Alvear
Set Design: Alice Jacobs
DP (Motion only): Grant Bell
Production: Rowan Productions
