My 9year old self idolized Kelly Kapowski’s style. She was pure, squeaky clean perfection. I would love to cite Madonna’s look in Desperately Seeking Susan as further inspiration, but sadly the film was marked PG-13, and to my horror my parents abided by the MPAA guidelines. Inspired by Kelly’s voluminous locks, I would badger my mother into braiding my hair into teeny tiny plaits before bed so I too could rock a high pony tailed crimp to school. Of course, no white girl fro was complete without the piece de resistance perched high on my kinked crown – a scrunchie.
Nostalgic as I am, I didn’t see the bunch bangle making a comeback. When Carrie Bradhsaw told Berger that “no woman who works at W Magazine and lives on Perry Street would be caught dead at a hip downtown restaurant wearing a scrunchie” I believed her. But lo, times are a changing. The scrunchie is back and it’s gone high end. It popped up in unexpected places at first – Ashish, Marc Jacobs, Chanel, Vickisarge and Louis Vuitton – then it creeped into the stores us normal folk frequent, like Rag & Bone and Topshop. Yes, fellow children of the 80’s, the accessory that has spent close to two decades being sported solely by figure skaters and poodles, is back with a vengeance – I am scraping my hair high on my head as we speak.
