The French Highlight Is Summer’s Effortless Color Trend

Reported by Vogue.

French-girl beauty has an almost unfair staying power — the barely-there lip, the undone fringe, the skin that looks like it simply woke up that way. Now, that same nonchalant philosophy has migrated fully into hair color, and the result is exactly as irritatingly chic as you'd expect.

Travis Ogletree, founder of Treehouse Studio in Los Angeles, developed what he's calling the French highlight after a Paris Fashion Week trip left him fixated on the effortless, grown-out color he kept seeing. According to Vogue, his new technique is a deliberate departure from his signature California highlight — brighter, sunnier, more maximalist — in favor of something quieter. The defining move? Precisely placed foils instead of the more commonly used balayage hand-painting method. Ogletree argues balayage works best on clients who already have naturally light hair or want visible warmth; foils, by contrast, deliver "a cleaner, more even lift" that still reads low-maintenance from across the room. The goal, as he puts it: "We're not reshooting the campaign, we're just editing in post."

The Art of Looking Like You Didn't Try

New York-based celebrity colorist Jeremy Cohen — whose roster includes Jennifer Lopez and Michelle Williams — echoes the same placement-first philosophy. He describes the effect as the kind of highlights you get from actual sun exposure as a kid: subtle, scattered, and somehow more convincing than anything that looks too deliberate. For brown hair especially, he says the right touch creates dimension that feels "glossy, elevated, and really expensive" — essentially the best possible version of your natural color rather than a departure from it.

What makes this trend genuinely useful rather than just aesthetically appealing is the flexibility. Ogletree says French highlights work across hair types and starting points — brunettes after a soft lift, blondes wanting to dial back contrast, anyone navigating gray. Because the placement is tailored and the effect is additive rather than transformative, it doesn't lock you into an aggressive maintenance cycle. No chasing brightness every six weeks, no quarterly glosses to keep things from going brassy. The color is designed to grow out gracefully, which in 2025 feels less like a compromise and more like the whole point.

The French highlight isn't reinventing color — it's finally giving the "expensive and effortless" brief a technique precise enough to back it up.

Read the original at Vogue.