Why Mocha Chocolate Is the Go-To Brunette Hair Color for Fall and Winter

While copper made a splash over the summer, it’s mocha chocolate that’s now dominating as the must-have brunette hair color for fall and winter. At the forefront of the trend is New York colorist Jenna Perry, who coined the term after coloring Bella Hadid’s lengths the deep, caffeinated shade for the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. “We were going for a deep seductive brown,” says Perry, who mixed up a warm, dark brown and added a little ash to the formula to give the supermodel’s waist-skimming lengths an opaque effect. “After seeing photos of her in France, the color reminded me of something decadent and dense like a chocolate mousse or a rich chocolate cake,” she continues. “So that’s where the name came from—I thought mocha chocolate resembled the decadence of this shade of brown.”

Amid sweater weather, Perry has churned out individualized takes of the “universally flattering brunette hair color” on a slew of stars including former blondes Chloë Sevigny and Dianna Agron, and longtime client and brunette bombshell Emily Ratajkowski. “A deep rich brunette is chic,” says Perry. “The color reflects warmly in the sun, so it doesn’t ever look drab.” Between Perry’s clientele and the slew of other stars going dark, such as Hailey Bieber, Ashley Olsen, and Sofia Richie, it’s stirring up inspiration not just for the change of season, but the ever-present ‘90s redux, too. “Sofia’s new hair color is giving me MAC Espresso lip liner and she’s too young to appreciate the reference,” wrote Nicole Richie on her Instagram Stories, sharing a snap of her younger sister’s newly darkened waves.