TOP KNOTS & NOTS

rgr-pop:

lau-fi:

I keep trying, humbly, to go for this

And end up with this

Why

Okay! First, I don’t want to police but I try not to call them topknots ‘cause they’re not and also I’m kind of sensitive about not being inadvertently appropriative/anthropologically weird/racist because just because, but, maybe I can help with this!

How long is your hair? See, my hair is SO MUCH that I can’t actually wear a regular bun anymore because any bun made out of my hair will be too heavy and will sink. Sinking is probably the most common reason for a top-of-the-head-bun to fail. The trick is to find the first point on your head where the bun will tend to fall forward instead of backward. For me, that point is pretty far forward on my head because my hair probably weighs at least six pounds. Any point behind this spot, and it’ll sink (and if you have as much hair as I do, it will hurt).

Flip your head upside down and brush everything downward until it’s the degree of smooth that you want it to be, until all the hairs are going the same way (like a mop dangling upside down), and until your part is powerless (I’ve got a pretty willful part, so this can be hard). Then, still upside down, you can gather it with your hands, like a ponytail, and slowly bring your hand closer to your head. I would suggest trying to bring it to your crown, or the spot on your head where it starts to get lower and flatter. (Think about where you would put an apple if you had to walk with an apple on your head: the spot that’s flattest and far enough forward on your head where the part behind it is higher. That’s the best spot for your bun.)

The next hard part is actually pulling it together; sometimes it’s hard to pull it all into a bun without twisting all of the hair around your head…like soft serve. What I do, I tighten my hand around the hair as close to the skull as I can (kind of like pinching it off) so it will hold in place, and then I use my other hand to kind of loop the rest of the hair into a ball (this part is very different for me, probably, because I have so much hair). Then I put a hair tie around the base, where my hand was. This part you’ll probably have to play around with more depending on how tight your bands are and how much hair you have.

Another tip for placement: when you are upside down, all your hair probably isn’t going to be the same length. To get a bun that far on top of your head, you have to have more hair (by length) behind it than in front of it, if that makes sense. Some of that puffing (and sinking) happens because you leave too much slack in the front. The perfect amount of puffing, like in the first post, can only happen if you start with a tighter front, and if gravity isn’t pulling on the bun from behind.

Hopefully helpful to all!

Also: I’m really into all of those variants, but I must admit I feel myself moving into a Masterpiece Theater phase.

I like the second hairstyle, wish I could do that one, very Merchant Ivory. 

But basically that bun on the top of the head is the only thing I can do with my hair and it rarely slips cos my hair is so thick I suppose, weird thing is, I can no longer have a bun on the back of my head because it’s so heavy it hurts, it hurts just to think of it. But yeah turning the head upside down is definitely the thing to do, and use really tight bands so it doesn’t loosen. Right now I’m working a bulbous top bun and an avocado facemask, I look awesome.  actually that’s quite frightening… 

What’s with all the CHANEL on tumblr?

It’s making me sick to see people worshiping luxury brands.

If you are rich and live amongst luxury brands and status symbols, fair enough, I will not follow you, I am not interested YAWN.

But what I have seen recently even amongst my own working-class-on-minimum-wage-or-student friends is aspirational worship of products that take several months worth of paychecks to afford. To say what? To pretend you’re rich? To pretend you are upper-class? Why? You’ve just spent all your money, gave your money to a mega-rich fashion house, and you are poorer than ever before. And don’t give me that ‘the price is representative of the quality’ bullshit I wouldn’t pay that much for a handbag that survived a nuclear strike… (and it wouldn’t you know, it would perish with the rest of the cows’ skins).

God help anyone if I see them wearing Doc Martens and Chanel or whatever. Doc Martens started as working class fashion, part of punk and socialist fashions in the 70s. They are showing they are completely fashion illiterate.

I love fashion. I love making clothes, I love wearing clothes, I love looking at clothes and buying clothes. I love consciously following trends, I love setting trends.
But when I see an otherwise well constructed outfit with a Chanel bag or randomly just a Chanel logo in the background for no apparent reason. I see ‘I give up’ ‘I don’t have my own style’ ‘I don’t understand fashion well enough to dress myself so I’ll just buy this label which says ‘I am rich’ on it and people will let me off the hook’.

I know what the label represents to them, it is a carefully constructed brand. It can mean luxury, femininity, comfort, old-fashioned-glamour etc. etc. But luxury brands do not have the monopoly on this imagery, on these feelings. Fashion can start from the bottom. It can be started by the poorest person, from someone who loses a button and replaces it with a safety pin to the original teenagers wearing worker’s denim as a sign of rebellion.