Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Elsie Tanner, the flame-haired temptress of 1960s Coronation Street, 19-year-old Princess Beatrice this week launched her new career as a catwalk model by posing with her red tresses up in rollers.
The image of the Queen's grand-daughter apparently caught in flagrante was deemed so sensational that she was plastered all over the media. One can only conclude that picture editors up and down the country have not cottoned on to the fact that old-fashioned curlers are currently the height of fashion and thus nothing to be ashamed of.
The absence of a cover-up hair net or chiffon scarf is testimony to curlers' current chic, as is the fact that vintage self-grip hair rollers are currently selling fast on eBay. It also explains the copycat behaviour of Beatrice's 48-year-old mother, the Duchess of York, who allowed herself to be photographed hair-up alongside her daughter prior to their surprise Dolce and Gabbana debuts in the grand finale of London Fashion Week.
She should surely have known that the hottest fashion trends, especially those that expose the face, are only for the young. When that well-known 21-year-old Wag Coleen McLoughlin, fiancee of footballer Wayne Rooney and thus by modern definition a fashion icon, was spotted in the street last week with her long hair held up by green and red hair rollers, she looked fresh-faced, fabulous and not at all fazed. By contrast, the older and wiser 47-year-old television personality Jonathan Ross reportedly wears his in the privacy of his dressing before going on air.
The look is probably a post-ironic nod to the 1960s, the decade long plundered by designers desperate for inspiration and best captured by Marilyn Monroe. The difference this time around is that curlers - including hairgrips à la Beatrice - are used on long hair rather than short, to create the softly undulating "just out of bed" look sported by almost every catwalk model on the planet during the show season. Medium-sized rollers, of course, give more fullness, while larger curlers give less fullness but more softness.
In the fickle world of fashion, it was only a matter of time before GHD (Good Hair Day) straighteners lost favour. Only last season they were the must-have item for stylists everywhere, but now they appear to have been consigned to the recycling bin of fashion history.
In our environmentally-aware age, contemporary curlers have the added bonus of being energy-efficient, don't need to be plugged into an energy source and don't require chemicals. Used correctly, the stylist should not need hairspray to fix the resulting curl.
By giving their purpose a modern make-over, contemporary stylists have helped curlers shed their unwelcome connotations. These no doubt have their roots in the early days of the Toni permanent rinse, when the rollers were small, mean affairs that clasped the hair painfully tight. The result was the pensioner pom-pom. You weren't supposed to need curlers after a perm but the result was usually so frizzy and unmanageable that their application was absolutely necessary. Even then, curlers were far from pain-free: the self-grip versions used hidden brush spikes that pranged the scalp as they held on for dear life. EBay fans and wannabe catwalk queens beware: sometimes being fashionably retro is enough to make your hair curl.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article