When it comes to vintage look nothing helps more than a perfectly retro-inspired hairstyle to create a great vintage outfit! You can wear the best dresses and accessories but if your hair doesn’t go with it you can totally miss the look!
Now that I have short hair it is hard for me to create vintage inspired hairdos but if you have longer hair there are many things that you can do. Let’s start from my favorite vintage hair ever: the 40’s victory rolls! Rita Hayworth and Veronica Lake are the perfect icons to take inspiration from and they are so versatile that you can sport them with vintage gowns for ceremonies or nights out as well as during the day, even to go to the office. When I used to do them I also loved to wear very basic clothes, not necessarily vintage and the effect was absolutely great!
Victory rolls were largely diffused during World War II as hairstyles needed to be practical because of women starting working while their husbands were fighting (it seems that the name comes from the fighter planes). They were perfect to leave the face clear and safe from the machines and they allowed women to wear hats.
To re-create them you only need (besides medium or long length hair!):
1. Heated rollers or hairdryer
2. Pin-curl clips
3. Combs
4. Boar bristle brush
5. Kirby grips
6. Hairspray
After washing your hair blow dry with a round brush or use heated rollers and prepare four sections with pin-curl clips. When your hair is dry remove the clips and rollers and part your hair on your favorite side.
Then you need to secure your hair in 4 sections: fringe (take a triangle from mid-way back on the top of your head to just above the temple), left side and right side (the front part from the top of your head to your ear), the back of your hair.
Backcomb the side sections taking smaller vertical sections of 1-2 cm through the larger section. Roll you’re your hair over your hand so that you can finish to roll with your finger and fix it with hairspray. Then to backcomb you’re your fringe, smooth out the top layer of the backcombing ready to roll it into the rest of the victory rolls. Roll your fringe around your three middle fingers, away from your parting. The roll should be as large as the largest of your two victory rolls. Pin it so that the second roll meets up with your fringe roll so that it looks like one roll.
You can leave your back hair down or you can smooth over the top layers with a boar bristle brush and, using Kirby grips, you can start fixing a row of support grips along your nape, about 2 cm above your hairline. Grips should cross-over for better support. Then you can create three sections: a center and two sides. Backcomb each section: reverse roll each section over your hand and clip into place, trying to create same size rolls so you csn make each section blend together to make one big roll.
Finish the look with abundant hairspray!
I learned these tips by watching online tutorials on Youtube (search for victory rolls tutorial to find your favorite ones) and by following the steps that I described taken from the book “Style me Vintage – Hair”.
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