beauty

Fancy hair how-to: No tricky braiding required

 Images: Instagram, How-To Hair Girl.

Madonna recently celebrated her 56th birthday in roaring 1920s style in Cannes. The Great Gatsby themed bash was attended by Kate Moss, fashion designers, famous photographers and her children, Roccoco Ritchie and adopted daughter Mercy. The singer’s dress was by Aussie designer Johanna Johnson, and if you’re keen to replicate her hairstyle Roxie Jane Hunt from How-To Hair Girl shares her tips on recreating a classic 1920s style.

The lead female character in The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, was loosely based on Zelda Fitzgerald – the dynamic and wilful wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was gorgeous and fashionable and hobnobbed with the boot-legging elite of New York in the 1920s. You’ve probably seen one of the movies, but if you haven’t read the book, please do.

Here is my interpretation of what Zelda’s hair (we’re guessing she was also Madonna’s inspiration) must have looked like when attending a swanky New York party.

This 1920s-inspired Gatsby girl hairstyle is much easier than it looks. I threw it together on a whim of experimentation on Whitney, my daughter’s fabulous kindergarten art teacher, who I think looks absolutely perfect as Zelda Fitzgerald.

Her hair is fine and medium-long. It is heavily highlighted, which helps it hold a style. I used no styling products. If you have very slick hair, you will definitely need a good texture spray to disperse throughout your hair to keep this style in place.

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Because it is a very drapey and loose hairstyle, it's hard to do on thick, straight, coarse hair. If that’s what you have, first set your hair with texture spray on damp hair, and one of HTHG’s no heat curl techniques. This will help it hold. Definitely get some long bobby pins, too.

Here's how I did it…

Step 1. Start by sectioning the hair down the side of the back. One side should be about two thirds of the head, and the other should be about one third of the head.

Step 2. On the heavy side, begin a twist that starts at the temple and wraps around the back of the head.

Step 3. Continue the twist all the way to the end of the section.

Step 4. Wrap the end into a loose bun and pin  through the bun with large bobby pins.

Step 5. Reinforce the twist with a couple small bobby pins. Don’t worry about making a really neat bun. It looks better loose.

Step 6. Now make another section that comes down from the top of the head to just in front of the ear.

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Step 7. Twist that section down to the ends of the hair.

Step 8. Now wrap it into a loose bun and pin it into place slightly above the first bun. Take a swig of a PBR and get ready for the next step.

Step 9. Make another section that leaves just a small amount of hair around the face. Twist it back and pin it into a small loose bun. This time use little bobby pins so you can hide them better.

Step 10. Take the last little bit of hair and twist it into a tiny little pincurl.

Step 11. Snuggle it in with the curl before it and try and hide the pin.

Step 12. Now give it a spray of firm hold hair spray if you want. It will help it hold.

Bootleg bride, anyone? Flapper? Red carpet starlet? Stuck at home on a rainy day? Just do it!

This post originally appeared on How-To Hair Girl and has been republished here with full permission.

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