Vintage Hair Styling Tips from Actual Professionals
Fashion & Beauty Vintage

Vintage Hair Styling Tips from Actual Professionals

I get emails a lot telling me about amazing interviews and tips that I might like to publish.

Generally I don’t as they are always irrelevant. Except last weeks email came from Hairdressing uniforms retailer www.simonjersey.com who have interviewed the owners of vintage salons Rockalily Cuts and Miss Dixiebell as well as vintage hair and make-up specialists Vintage Hair Lounge about their must-have essential products for vintage styling.

I was interested to read it myself, as I obviously have my own favourites for personal use. So I thought this was one I could share.

Apparently Rockalily Cuts swears by Layrite , a gents hairdressing product which they stock from Las Vegas. They sell a few pomade products, which as well as being good for gents hair are also excellent for smoothing flyaways and helping with victory rolls and faux bangs as well. I use Black & White, but the Layrite packaging looks much cooler!

For the ladies it’s hairspray “we go through it like it’s going out of fashion!”. I’m not sure which brand of hairspray they use at Rockalily, but Vintage gals the world over seem to generally be split into the old school Elnett camp, or the new fangled Tresemme Freeze Hold camp. Myself I’m a Tresemme Gal, nothing will budge a do held up with that stuff.

Rockalily Cuts - credit Simon Jersey & Headline Honey

The Vintage Hair Lounge use a brand I wasn’t even aware of “We are big fans of Davines and have been stockists since the start of Vintage Hair Lounge. The products are very complimentary to the specific kind of work we do, and it is a joy to be working more closely with the brand as they are now official sponsors of Vintage Hair Lounge at Goodwood Revival 2013.”

I took a peek at the Davines website, and I’m quite intrigued by their curling lotion. I wonder if it would be any gentler to my bleached hair than my current setting lotion, and if it is, will still actually *work*. The products have slightly unusual names (“glossy plasteline” anyone?) so I’ll need to have a bit of an investigation into what they’ve got. Cement powder seems particularly intriguing for those of you with hard to control hair.

Vintage Hair Lounge - credit Simon Jersey & Headline Honey

Miss Dixiebell apparently doesn’t use a lot of products in their salon, but interesting they “swear by Schwartzkopf hairspray and Black and White pomade.” Have you tried Schwartzkopff hairspray, it’s not one I’ve heard mentioned before?

They also  recommend going old school for curling, and I TOTALLY agree. “Our setting lotion is non-branded and is the best around, although we’re currently trying out a homemade setting lotion from a recipe from the 1940s. We use old-school Carmen rollers and Babyliss tongs – never straighteners for curling!”

Miss Dixiebelle - credit Simon Jersey & Headline Honey

If you want my humble recommendation, then you can’t go wrong with a can of Batiste Dry Shampoo. It smells nice, comes in coloured varieties you can use to cover your roots, and adds texture and manageability to too clean hair, as well as giving greasy hair a bit of a refresh.

You might remember (or maybe you don’t!) that I was running hair classes with the Historical Sauces for the last year. Our last one for a while ran earlier this year as our other work commitments were making them too difficult to run regularly. We might be back in the future, but in the mean time if you fancy learning how to style your own hair then Rockalily Cuts runs sessions to help you learn how to style your own hair. Take a look at the website for more details on those.

All illustrations by Headline Honey.

Note: This is a sponsored post, but all opinions are my own, especially on the Batiste and the Tresemme, they rock.

19 Comments

  • Helen Mae September 5, 2013

    Batiste dry shampoo is one of my favourite hair products too, I get through tons of the stuff! I’ll maybe try some of the brands mentioned here, I’m always on the lookout for new products to try on my difficult hair.

  • Helen September 5, 2013

    Schwarzkopf stuff is pretty good – I use their hairdye and I *think* my heat protection spray is one of theirs as well.

    I’m completely there with you about Tresemme – another vintage hair stylist who I won’t mention as this is a sponsored post swears by it too!

    Re dry shampoo – I’ve used Tresemme’s and that’s great. I do find though that it’s best without any other stuff on my hair – if I’ve had four days of hairspray then the dry shampoo isn’t too happy. I’ve tried Superdrug’s own-brand dry shampoo, and that’s not much to write home about.

    • Gemma September 5, 2013

      My red used to be Schwarzkopff I think, but I never tried their hairspray! I never tried Tresemmes dry shampoo either. Will have to see if it’s cheaper than batiste!

  • liz September 6, 2013

    The Davines ‘love’ conditioner for frizzy hair is fantastic. It actually works. Unfortunately it is also expensive, about £15. I inherited my tub from a flatmate who moved out and I’m being very careful with the amount I use!

  • Sam Tatters September 17, 2013

    This sort of thing is all very interesting – but where’s the important information about the companies who are producing all these products and whether they’re cruelty free or not? L’Oreal might think me having a nice barnett is worthy of a few bunnies dying in pain but I certainly don’t!

    • Gemma September 17, 2013

      I’m sure the companies will be able to provide you with that information if you ask.

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