Manic Expression With A Rainbow Of Possibilities, Manic Panic Hair Pigment Is Turning Heads Everywhere

Forget those subtle shades of flaxen blond, copper red, and warm chestnut that Linda Evangelista would have you believe are all the rage in hair coloring.

Truly hip hair is asserting itself in shades more commonly associated with artificial candy and kitsch ‘70s poster art.

The hair dye du jour? It’s called Manic Panic and it comes in shades of “atomic turquoise,” “cotton candy,” “shocking blue,” and “electric sunshine.”

Dennis Rodman, Manic Panic’s unofficial poster child, has strutted in locks of apple green and shocking red (the “rock it red” perhaps?), and since has graduated to more elaborate rainbows and even a red AIDS ribbon against a white background.

But Rodman is hardly alone.

Manic Panic has graced the heads of Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong, Porno for Pyros and Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell, Weiland of the Stone Temple Pilots and Mike D of the Beastie Boys. Cyndi Lauper was an early Panic pioneer, and models Rachel Williams and Jenny Shimizu and actresses Ione Skye and Lori Petty also have Panicked. The ever-whimsical designer Todd Oldham has gone green himself.

It’s inevitable that Cher, a woman hardly known for cosmetic restraint, has taken to the Manic Panic bottle, too.

But celebrated heads aren’t the only ones turning heads. From New York City’s Soho to Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue the daring and probably non-corporately employed have taken Manic Panic’s pigment plunge.

At only $8 a bottle and with an array of 32 shades available, dying possibilities abound. Some of the more creative are creating bilevels of white hair on top with brightly colored ends.

“Deep, rich purply reds, I think, will be the big colors this year,” says Victoria Gentry, an image consultant on the road with the Lollapalooza tour. (An image consultant at Lollapalooza? Who knew?)

“Hair color is rather limited,” says Manic Panic’s co-owner Tish Bellomo. “It’s anywhere between black and blond, and that’s pretty boring.”

Manic Panic has its roots, so to speak, in punk. Way back in the mid-1970s, Bellomo and her partner-sister, Snooky, were singing backup for Blondie when the band was just another unsigned group playing CBGBs.

It was a time so devoid of hair coloring alternatives that lead singer Debbie Harry was using mere food coloring on her bleached-out tresses.

Like good entrepreneurs, the Bellomos sensed a need and stepped in to fill the void by importing Manic Panic from England.