One thing that always peeves me is how hard it is to find good examples of curly hairstyles. As if it’s hard to make curly hair look great! Quite the contrary, my dears. I, myself, have quite a few stand-bys that I like to sport, and it often looks professionally done (despite taking 5 minutes or less to “do”).

1) The Pile: This is the easiest and most becoming, in my opinion. It also works on any length that is long enough to pull into a pony tail. There are modifications for shorter hair, but we’ll get to that shortly.

What you need:

• 1 thin elastic hair rubber band (“Ouchless” with no metal bar, preferably)
• About 4-8 bobby pins, depending on your hair thickness and length

How it works:

• Put your head upside down and gather all of your hair toward the middle of the crown of your head. How far toward the back or toward your brow is up to you.
• Gather the hair into the elastic. Wrap the elastic around your hair once or twice. Only twice if it’s loose enough to slide right off once your put your hair upright. Never more than twice, if you need to wrap it more than twice get a newer, more elastic band.
• Flip your head back up slowly and fasten the elastic band where you want the pony to stay on top of your head. Pull the hair up and out of the pony-tail holder so the elastic is as close to your scalp as possible. It looks kind of Victorian era, which is what I love about it, but it’s also a pretty quick and easy up-do sort of look that works at the office or at a fancier event. Experiment with how many curly tendrils you’d like to have escaping around your face for the best effect.

For shorter hair:

• It will take time to perfect this look if your hair is too short to get into a pony tail, but you can use just bobby pins. Start with pieces on top and start positioning them the way you’d like them, a little higher up on your crown perhaps. When they look good, use as many bobby pins as it takes to keep it that way. Then continue to go down your head doing this with every layer. The bottom later can be pulled up and criss-crossed over the back of your head, and bobby pinned to stay that way.
• If your hair is so thick that the pins aren’t cutting it, try using mini claw clips instead.

2) The Side-braid: I’ve mentioned before that I love this look, it’s so medieval. I often braid my hair when I’m sleeping since it’s so long that it gets tangled and matted to my neck in warmer weather. Just loosely braid your hair down the side of your head, as a french bread if you’re so adept, or you can bobby-pin stray tendrils if you can only manage a regular braid. I usually like to keep some hair around my face, but you can switch it up.

3) The Fountain: The regular claw clips also come in handy to simply twist your hair from behind in one large twist, then fasten it to your scalp toward the top of your head. If you have enough hair it will spout out of the top like a fountain. As with the other do’s, you can bobby pin any stray hairs in place.

4) Headbands: Until recently, I had equated headbands with those stiff plastic things that gave me headaches if worn too long in the 80’s. Much has changed since those days, there are some great options that don’t squeeze your head so tightly and are much more fun to wear–even more so when you mix and match. My favorite is to twist my hair in the back of my head and to pin it up with as many bobby pins are needed to keep in place. Next, I add on headband in the usual place, and one more toward the back to elongate the front-to-back direction of my hair, as seen at right. Use a few bobbies to keep the bands in place, and voila!
Headbands pictured are from LF.

NOTE: Bobby pins have a frizzing effect if used too liberally, so don’t attempt a highly pinned look if you want to let your hair down later on in the day. If you want to pin pieces back, go with the mini claw clips, as they come out easily and ruffle-free.