So you think you’ve got Salma Hayek’s style sussed. She’s the queen of mic drop swimwear moments, the coolest mum at fashion week, and a happy ambassador for her husband François-Henri Pinaut’s stable of Kering brands. Right? In part, yes.
What makes Salma so brilliant is that she operates between two different modes: red-carpet bombshell and bare-faced, kaftan-wearing nature lover. Pictures of her petting animals sit next to yacht party snaps, while major Balenciaga and Gucci looks jostle for attention next to her pet owls. Nothing about Hayek’s fun-loving life is held back, as her followers respond to her honest musings on everything from Penélope Cruz being her style sister, to gender equality, the best way to celebrate turning 56 and taking time to stop and find inner peace.
Honesty has always been Hayek’s MO, coupled with a sense of self-worth and inner confidence that money can’t buy. When the big-name brands, who she now has on speed dial, wouldn’t dress the rising talent in the ’90s, she developed her own style leaning on body-conscious silhouettes that are still her calling card to this day. “I had trouble getting clothes, and I couldn’t afford it on my own,” she told Vogue in 2020. “The other girls were getting people to lend them clothes, but nobody thought a Mexican was going to stick around, so why give me a dress. Things have changed a lot since then.”
What hasn’t changed is Hayek’s love of fashion and her desire to inject personality into everything she wears. This is a woman who worked with Joseph Altuzarra to weave her dog Diva into her 2018 Met Gala look (the theme, inexplicably, was Fashion and the Catholic Imagination), who wears fresh flowers in her hair, and who gives challenging trends, from corsetry to pantaboots, the same gusto as the models debuting them. She wears the colours of the Ukrainian flag to Balenciaga shows, but also has the patience to pose next to a gaffer taped-up Kim Kardashian for the paps. Hayek is the actor who lets her co-stars (hello Gaga) enjoy the spotlight while quietly delivering slam-dunk press moments of her own. She never fails to make us smile.
If we can’t quite put our finger on Hayek’s unique sense of cool, it’s because it probably lies somewhere in between the sunshine, dolphin, pineapple, lipstick, diamond, star and chilli pepper emojis (we could go on) that make up her social-media bio. Salma is a ray of light. A rare breed of intelligence, whimsy and fearlessness. Fashion would be an infinitely more boring place without her.
