The ponytail is no new thing, but for autumn/winter 2013, it’s going to be huge. HUGE, I tell you. We’ve already touched on this season’s Croydon facelift trend, but in terms of the catwalk, there hasn’t been a hair trend as strong as this since… Erdem’s S/S12 halo braid, which set off a multitude of imitations as soon as the show closed. And ponytail-wise, be prepared for all shapes and sizes this season. Some less structured versus some which are much more angular poise. At Donna Karan, hair stylist Eugene Souileman created a clean, linear style which he referred to rather dramatically as ‘great architecture’. In his words, this season’s ponytail is about ‘a new classicism, that is subtle too. It’s ready-to-wear meets couture’.

While many of you are probably thinking: ‘well how many variations on the ponytail can you actually get?’, I’m going to shock you when I say at least a dozen. Seriously. Backstage at the shows, I saw so many reincarnations of the classic ponytail I thought I ought to write a book about it. From the wind-swept, side-parting style seen at Iceberg to the double twist at Barbara Bui, there’s bloody hundreds of them this season.

Click through the gallery above to see the most celebrated (and easy to copy) ponytails from the autumn/winter 2013 shows. Shot gun the ‘Laura Bailey’, as seen at Karen Walker.