Adventures in Vintage Hair-Pillow Soft Rollers

Recently, roughly 4 years after beginning my foray into vintage style, I'm experience something of a seismic fashion shift.  I was first drawn to vintage because of my love of 1930s styles.  Particularly the looks sported by Ginger Rogers and the fictional Miss Lemon on Poirot.

I sported 1920s and 40s looks too, but the 30s was my decade of choice.

These days the 1930s remains my favorite fashion decade but four years into wearing vintage I've realized that clothing from this era just might not be the most practical.  Authentic clothing that is 80 years old is extremely hard to find a very, very delicate. 

This dress only survived a few wearings before the seams became too fragile to wear

 Plus the repro options for 30s looks are limited exclusively to custom made which can be pricey and time consuming.   


So for those reasons I've recently been getting more and more into 1950s fashions.  Fifties clothes are fun and practical, there really is nothing more comfortable to wear then a full skirt, and both the genuine vintage and reproduction options are less expensive and more plentiful.    Plus the older I get, I'll be forty in two years, the more I'm drawn to fun fashion, particularly the whimsical novelty prints of the 1950s and the kitschy purses and accessories.  I guess I'm getting less mature with age.


This change has presented something of a hair crises.  I have absolutely no hair styling skills what-so-ever!   For years I had a pixie cut and didn't even own a hair dryer or a brush.    When I got first got into vintage I had a sort of short bob that could work with 20s and 30s looks and was very easy to style.

It worked for 50s looks to,  but I get  bored easily.  Lately  I've been looking at so many fun 50s fashion images that I'm really craving, curly mid-century hair.   My current dream hair is a 1950s style bob with bangs.  (Bangs are my gaur security blanket).

I love this ladies hair.  It's styled but not stiff.  

  

Vintage blogger Tasha of By Gum, By Golly has an amazing version:

What I love about this cut I think it could be styled for any decade from the 20s to the early 60s, and I certainly don't plan to give up my 30s looks completely.

I need to change my hair cut to get this look, and I'll need to grow my hair longer in the back then in the front, the reverse of what I have now.  However, length and cut is only half the bottle.  This look requires some styling skill and hair rollers.  I'm very, very new to vintage hair and my attempts are beyond amatuerish.  I joined the face book Vintage Updos For Modern Girls and those ladies are pros!  I've learned a lot but I still have a long way go to.

I began my vintage hair experiments with some pillow soft rollers I bought at the drug store.  I was hoping they'd be comfy to sleep in.  After washing my hair I just combed through some motions setting lotion and then twisted it up in the rollers (an interesting look).

I slept on it that night, not really all that comfy  but not agonizing, and this was the result the first day.

Not too bad, but not great.   Sadly by the afternoon the curls where seriously deflating.   I don't think the humidity helped.  

I don't wash my hair every night so that evening I just spritzed it with water to dampen it and then re-set it in the rollers.   The next morning  I was pretty pleased with the results.

It's a still a long way from perfect.  There is frizz going on and I don't quite have the curl height I wanted, but I'm going to keep practicing.  The curls don't seem to last long and I just don't love sleeping on rollers.  1950s ladies must have been slaves to their hair!  I'm determined to find an every day vintage look that will work quickly and well.   Any tips are appreciated!  

Cinema Spotlight-1926's Man Trap Starring Clara Bow

When it comes to 1920s silent film flappers there was triumvirate of stars:

Louise Brooks-The serious sophisticated flapper 

Colleen Moore-The good girl flapper

and Louise Brooks-The sexy flapper:

In fact Brook's is very prescient of another vintage star who came along decades later, Marilyn Monroe.  (Monroe even did a 1958 photo shoot where she dressed up as Bow).

Bow's seductive comic charms are on excellent display in the 1926 film Man Trap.

The film is basically a comic love triangle.   Ralph Prescott is a stressed out New York Lawyer with an office full of flappers suing for divorce. 



 After one blonde haired bobbed client plays footsie with him under the desk (in a pair of adorable diamante buckled heels)  He snaps.   

Desperate for a break from the modern women he decides to go on a vacation in outdoorsy "he man" country.  He settles on an isolated backs wood area known as, Man Trap.

Meanwhile, a trapper named Joe living in Man Trap is having the opposite problem.  

Tired of the woods and the lack of feminine companionship he decides to take a brief vacation in Minneapolis.  While there he meets Alverna, a charming manicurist played by Bow.

Opposites attract and soon Joe and Alverna are going on a dinner date.

A few weeks pass and the film returns to Ralph, the New York lawyer is not enjoying his out doorsy vacation as much as he had hoped.

Joe stumbles upon Ralph, miserable and wet in the woods and agrees to take him back to his cabin.  Ralph is thrilled to go, until he glimpses Joe's wife, Alverna.  It seems right after the dinner date Joe and Alverna headed to the preacher.   Alverna is clad in a charming gingham country frock, but her flapper spirit is shining through.

Soon Alverna is flirting shamelessly with Ralph who is simultaneously attracted and repelled.

Alverna throws a wild  back woods 1920s jazz party

and smolders in a checked wool dressing gown while Ralph keeps watch for hostile Indians.

Soon Ralph can take the temptation no more and not wanting to hurt Joe's feelings he decides to head back to the city. 

Alverna though, is sick of country life, and runs away following Ralph and planning on getting him to take her to the city. 

 At first Ralph refuses 

to let her come along, but fearing for her safety in the woods he soon relents.

The trip back to civilization doesn't go smoothly.   Ralph's guide absconds with their food and Alverna flirts with a helicopter patrolman.  By the time Joe catches up with them, the new couple are quarreling.

Joe and Ralph set to bickering over Alverna and complaining about her flirting.   Alverna quickly gets fed up with the conversation and laughing, heads off to Minneapolis in Joe's boat.

I truly wish the film had ended here.  Alverna is obviously not the marrying kind and would never be happy living isolated in the woods, but this is a 1926 film and films of this time didn't truly embrace liberated women.  So sadly the film does not end here.  

Ralph returns to New York, refreshed from his vacation and prepared to deal with flapper divorcees and Alverna, after a brief break in the city, goes back home to Joe.  Soon she's begging Joe for forgiveness and he's eagerly embracing her.   Alverna isn't so easily chastised though, over Joe's shoulder she glimpses a handsome park ranger and soon she's back to her flirting ways!

Man Trap is directed by Victor Fleming:

Who would go on to make The Wizard of Oz.  It has been fully restored and has excellent picture quality.  Man Trap isn't available for streaming but the DVD can be purchased on Amazon for $16.95.  It's essential viewing for any fan of Clara's charming silent comedy.