Hair or Flair

Which One Comes First?

In the past half year or so, I've changed up my hair quite a lot. I did fuck all with it for the majority of 2013 - before we hit late June or early July and completely unplanned, I cut in a full fringe and lopped a lot of my hair off with it. Before, it easily fell to my elbows. Then I dyed it blue, from around my shoulders downward. As I swam a lot over the summer holidays, the blue dye faded to green. I grew out the fringe and the rest of my hair, which was a painful process pretty much entirely involving a lot of flowery alice bands to drag the scraggles of hair away from my face. And then, once again, without a lot of planning, I had a side fringe cut in and choppy layers all of the way around.

My hair has been this way now for about two or three months, and once again, I feel ready to change. I'm kind of easing my way shorter, because I get sick of a hairstyle really frequently as of late.

But there is another trend I have noticed. The second I change my hair, my style changes with it. And whilst it would make a million times more sense if your style dictated how your hair was, I reckon it's the other way around.

For instance, I wore my hair like this (see left) ever since around Year Eight at secondary. It was long (usually longer than this) parted straight down my head or occasionally pulled back with a bandana. Wearing hair as long as it would go and with a bandana was relatively similar to hippie fashion (all I needed were the gold streaks) and it was true. This was the period of my life when I stopped eating meat, despite the fact that my diet is already pretty difficult to cope with, and I wore mostly brightly coloured shirts with swirly pattens, and jeans. I also (rather embarrassingly, now) had a hideous kaftan which I thought was fabulous.

This, however, changed when one day, on a whim, I cut in a box fringe. This photo was of me and some friends on the french exchange last summer, and I'm pretty sure I cut my hair this way and over night became Mitchie from Camp Rock. Ironically, I was then cast as Mitchie in a school musical of Camp Rock 2, but we don't talk about that. Previously to being cast, however, I had never seen Camp Rock and didn't really know who Demi Lovato was. But hey! I donned the summer dresses, which I still love now, but I also stole my mother's odd denim jacket, which has a cut so that it kind of flares out over the hips. Considering that I had no experience of the culture I was emulating without know it, this kind of does suggest that your hair has some kind of weird power over your attire and the way you act - I got into lots of ukulele playing, happy guitar-ey music. As I discovered became more and more a part of Camp Rock 2, I began to dislike the fringe (and the musical) more and more, (especially as it kept growing into my eyes) and I eventually began to grow it out.

When I dyed my hair blue (it later faded to green) I kept the summery dresses, but also became...more mermaid-ey? The fabrics were more likely to be floaty, occasionally sheer with a much cooler colour spectrum. For rugby over the summer, I plaited it tightly at the sides, which may have sparked my next miniature transformation.

At this stage, I started wearing glasses because I discovered I had very slight astigmatism. The nerdy glasses, coupled with the fact that I started wearing ribbons to pull back the weird fringey bits of my hair and plaiting it to play sports inspired a St Trinians-esque transformation. I began to dress like a school girl outside of school, with pleated skirts and plaid shorts over white shirts with the sleeves cut off. This was also when I began wearing my ballet tights as a fashion accessory.

Finally, I decided to follow my own roots - the music I was listening to was punk and grunge and post hardcore - and I had a side fringe cut in. I didn't really think about the emo connotations until after I had completely altered the way I dressed. I began making DIY band merchandise, pairing my tartan instead of with shirts with tshirts. I returned to my Year 7 and 8 grunge traditions of sticking safety pins through my ears. I began wanting a lip ring more than anything else.

Now, I kind of want to keep the same vibes, but go a little shorter and a lot choppier. But that's irrelevant.

Which comes first, hair or flair? Logic would say flair - you change the way you look and so you change your hair to fit your style. But completely nonsensically, it appears to be the other way around!

Maybe, because your hair is more permanent than the clothes you wear, it is easier to dictate our fashion choices around our haircut. Maybe I'm reading wayyy too much into this. What say'st thou?

Bella Fern xx