The Best Braids in Vogue

When a room full of Vogue editors sat down to discuss this year’s Global Women portfolio, we quickly focused on that beauty rite that unites so many disparate communities around the world—hair braiding. In a series of photo essays and reported stories, we explore the hairstyle from Togo to Tibet, at weddings and on the runways, working with local photographers across four continents to capture the style in all its richness, creativity, and sheer gorgeousness. Even as we looked outward, we also looked back, mining the archive to see how Vogue has photographed, written about, and considered braids over the past hundred years.

It is relatively recently that the braiding of Black hair—a tradition that reaches back centuries in this country—has been given proper consideration in the pages of Vogue. Witness, for instance, Daniel Jackson capturing an extravagantly braided Anok Yai as a modern superhero with metallic teal eyelids in 2020 or Rémi Lamandé in 2018 shooting the Norwegian model twins Martine and Gunnhild Chioko Johansen with their hair in thick plaits flowing from one head to the other (courtesy of star hairstylist Jawara)—a riff on traditional braiding techniques as well as a coy wink to the sisters’ intertwined lives. In another 2020 shoot Eniola Abioro models a head of braids (and interwoven cowrie shells) styled by Latarra Clarke, who went from working as a cashier at Waitrose and styling hair on the side to doing the braids for Gucci runway shows. As the breadth of our Global Women project shows, the braid rarely tells the whole story, but the below images do a good job trying.