Meet my hair

 When people say 'hair like silk', it's generally meant as a compliment.  As someone with hair like silk, it's a pain in the ass.  It slips through combs and bobby pins almost instantly.  It resists any change to it's shape such as, oh say, curling.  When you do get it to curl, it rebels and turns to frizz and poodle hair before snapping back to straight.  I've been working on convincing my hair to look glamorous and wavy for years.  No exaggeration, years.

Keeping it glamorous

I went through all the iterations:  hot rollers, wet sets, curling iron, every product known to humankind that might help my hair hold a wave.  Some did nothing, some did too much, some left my hair a fried mess.  I followed tons of YouTube videos that all had the same general idea:  wet set for stubborn hair, brush out vigorously, magically have amazing vintage hair.  I tried that and had a lot of different disasters.  By trial and error, I found what works for my hair.

1.  Wet Set - Really, wet sets are the way to go for my hair.  It's so stubbornly straight that if I try to set it with hot rollers or a curling iron the curls will fall out.  I do hot rollers on days where a wet set wasn't possible or to fix a wet set gone bad but the curls are looser and I have to use a lot of product to keep them in.  It also takes me forever to set hot rollers, then pin up the curls to cool, and then style.  The results are nice but the wet set is so much easier to live with.

Hot rollers on the left, wet set with pillow rollers just on the ends in the middle, wet set with foam rollers on the right 

With a wet set, I can get 2 - 3 days of curls from that one set.  I use a lot less product and don't have to be nearly as careful with it.  With hot rollers, I pretty much just tussle it with my fingers, hair spray it to hell, and pray it lasts a day.  The trick with the wet set is for my hair to be damp but not feel damp so it will dry overnight.  I work setting lotion through my hair after a shower.  When my hair is at that magical point where it feels like it's dry but is also cool to the touch, I roll it up.  If I do it too soon (or don't want to wait) I sit under my soft bonnet dryer for about 30 minutes to give the drying a head start.

Stylish

2.  Big Rollers - I love the little pillow rollers for sleeping on but I end up with really little curls that turn to poodle frizz.  Same with the pink sponge rollers.  By the time I've brushed them enough to get to waves, I have no curl left.  My pillow rollers only get used when I'm just setting the bottom of my hair for a casual, easy to deal with (and get some sleep with) look.  If I'm going for big vintage waves, I've now settled on the foam rod rollers since they don't collapse when I roll my hair and give me bigger curls.

I'm just now noticing I always tip my head the same way when taking a picture of something on my head

I hate sleeping on them but the results are so much better for my hair.  I can get the glamorous waves I want instead of the super poofy 80s look.  Poofy skirts, not poofy triangle shaped hair.  With the bigger rolls I don't have to handle my hair nearly as much and the curls don't get destroyed.

3.  Light Touch - So many videos show people brushing through their wet sets like they're going to beat the curls into submission.  Considering I look like Shirley Temple on crack when I take my rollers out, I did the same thing.  

Eat your heart out, Shirley Temple

I would attack that frizzy mess with my paddle brush and keep brushing and brushing.  I would go straight from poodle hair to flat.  Everyone says you can't brush out a wet set.  Ha, watch me!  I saw a comment on a YouTube tutorial about using a wide tooth comb and a boar hair brush.  Game changer.  I don't use my paddle brush at all with these big curls and brush as little as possible.  I now break up my curls and get things untangled with a sandalwood comb, then go in with my boar hair brush to smooth everything out and get the curls to the level I want.  Combined with the bigger rollers, my hair now falls into a reliable style that does not look like a poodle.

My hair after about five minutes with a wide tooth comb

4.  The Right Pomade - Pomade really makes the classic 1950s hair.  I had some that was too heavy and sticky that knocked my curls out.  I wanted all the hold and ended up with a mess.  I swapped to Layrite Pomade and that fixed my last problem.  It's lightweight, not sticky, and tames my curls into the structured shape we're all looking for.  It also smells nice.  Unless I'm doing something special with my hair, I usually run some pomade through my hair before using the boar hair brush and that's it for products. 

After adding pomade and finishing with the boar bristle brush

5.  Know when to say fuck it - And some days I just can't deal with my hair and it goes in a bun.  Or chignon if you want to sound vintage.  Throw a little hairnet over top so it can't escape and voila, vintage hair.  I like to do a bit of wave in the front so it looks a bit more 50's but most days if it's in a bun, it's because I just don't want to talk to my hair anymore.

Basically put my hair in the time out corner, thank many gods for hair nets

I'm not going to pretend that my hair is now perfect and wonderful all the time.  It's weird and wonky and changing weather can make me reach for a scarf to hide all of it.  But I'm a lot closer than I was before and figured I would pass along what worked for anyone else with healthy, silky hair that simply hates cooperating.