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[INTERVIEW] Allure: Taeyong of NCT opens up to Allure about the importance of hair and makeup in K-Pop!
When a singer changes up their look after a while and releases new music, the moment is often called a comeback. Mononymous divas Madonna, Rihanna, and Cher are iconic testaments to this periodic phenomenon. For Taeyong, a member of the Korean pop group NCT, dyeing his hair a new color or mixing up the way he does his makeup is basically a monthly occurrence. He’s a chameleon, taking on a new look every time NCT or one of its subunits drops a new music video. This year alone, he’s transformed into at least five different people.
For boy groups like NCT, a couple of the members will dye their hair a bright color or adjust their smoky-eye look to reflect their latest concept. These hair and makeup tweaks tend to be subtle. However, they’re always drastic for Taeyong. In the last six months alone, his hair has gone from blue to blonde to green to chocolate brown to red to several other shades of brown. His makeup changes with his dye jobs, too, becoming darker, subtler, or sparklier with each one. He’s like the Method actor version of a K-pop star, fully embodying each song with his look and attitude.
“For each comeback, [our stylists] change up my looks a lot,” Taeyong tells Allure. Because I’m based in New York and he was promoting NCT’s newest single, “Black on Black,” in Seoul, we chat over the phone at 1:30 a.m. ET. Noting that K-pop has so many visual elements like choreography and music videos to represent the music, Taeyong says NCT’s concepts, including hair and makeup, are another important element to reflect the music in a visual way. In fact, his hair and makeup become so ingrained in each song that when he performs them a couple months later with a whole new look, the song has a completely different vibe to it.
Read the full interview here
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