News feed
If we were to believe the sartorially informed runways of fashion week, then the bobby pin – in all its humble, undecorated glory – is back in fashionable favour. That inconsequential, paltry little object, which once only served purposes of functionality as oppose to fashionability, has made an unexpected comeback into the beauty world via New York, London and Milan. The slender metallic clip, once confined to holding in place Curly Sue ringlets and lacquered locks at dance concerts and the like, has been given a suitably satisfying reworking.
Take Versace for example, which updated the humble hair slide the only way Versace knows how – with ostentatious flair and a lot of gold.
In what was a spectacular tribute to the late Gianni, where would a Versace collection be without its Medusa motif? The leitmotif of the Italian house was not only reworked across retro silks and sorbet leather, but the bobby pin roared with that iconic Versace bite. In various manifestations, it either lined the entire pin, or was simply affixed at one end. Hair was distinctly Versace, parted down the middle, sleek and dead straight, pressed into place at the ear with bedecked pins.
At JW Anderson, it was a case of The Royal Tenenbaums treatment, with a singular pin holding model hair back (plus that linear black eyeliner, how very Margot, indeed). Perhaps an homage to another Anderson (albeit conscious or not) the Margot Tenenbaum musing was clear from the peripheral.
Hair was deeply side-parted, straightened and affixed with a simple, unadorned bobby pin – the type you would see floating around girls changing rooms in droves. When JW Anderson does it however, it’s fashion.
Whilst Simone Rocha took her floral whimsy to hairpins, bejewelling them in coloured perspex and pearls and scattering them against girlish, textured hair.
Fuzzy flyaways and rumpled curls were kept in place with the strategic, yet scattered placement of beautifully adorned pins. Some bulbous (to match giant bauble earrings), others delicate and encrusted with dainty diamonds, all in all it was a fussy, feminine take on a typically unfussy hair accessory.
With the trajectory of the hair accessory seemingly on the rise, time to pin, promptly.
