Vintage Hairstyles: How To Look Like a ‘Mad Men’ Sexy Bitch

Secret fact: Donnybrook gentle-ladies emanate a sex appeal that, despite years of scientific testing, has defied all explanations of its origins. It’s because we watch Mad Men. A lot of Mad Men. We even suffered through an ep of the Playboy Club JUST for the hairstyles. Mad Men makes us want to smoke lots of cigarettes, drink even more booze even earlier in the morning, and it makes us want to break out those dusty pincurlers to do vintage hairstyles.

THAT WAS YOUR FIRST TEST! ‘Pincurlers’ do not exist.* You use simple hairpins to make pin curls.

Call me old-fashioned, but vintage hairstyles and tailored wardrobes offer a sexy, classy, feminine appeal that just doesn’t exist anymore. You could achieve this look by becoming a “real” hairstylist, or you could just be like me: unable to NOT click on ModCloth ads on Facebook, and completely addicted to awesome/creepy vintage hair tutorials on YouTube.

Here I’ll share with you what I’ve learned, and I might even teach you how to smoke a cigarette like a woman.

Pin curls

Setting your hair in pin curls is basically making curls in your hair without the curlers. You can start with your hair damp or dry, depending on how curly you want it to be – dry produces less curl, naturellement. It helps to use a product like Garnier Fructis fiber gum putty just on the ends. Take about an inch-thick section of hair, and roll the end up until you have a little disc (nay, donut?) of hair that you keep rolling in towards your head, then you secure the hair-donut (yuck!?) with hairpins. I love this website so I’m just gonna link to them each time I use the word “hairpin.”

Here, videos do the explaining much better:

Depending on the hairstyle, you can curl them in different directions. I like pin curls better than rollers because they give you more freedom, hairstyle-wise, they seem to dry quicker (maybe it’s the air in the middle of the donut?), and they’re much more comfortable to sleep on. They’re better than curling irons because they don’t damage your hair. I even walk around in public with them because I think they look cute, but I’m kind of a lunatic sometimes.

You use pin curls as a base for your hairstyle. Once you take them out, you can actually shape your hair into those hairstyles that seem to defy gravity just by brushing the curls out. Your hair gets all springy LIKE THIS!

Now you have the basics. Make sure to also watch Strawberry Koi’s Pin Curls Tutorial Part 2 on taking your pin curls out, ya hear? (sorry, in my head this whole thing is written in an old-timey voice)

So Strawberry Koi is where I personally got started. She has tutorials on how to tie a scarf, make a tiara, do Heidi braids or a pageboy, and she has a beehive series that is muy Mad Men. Cute! If you go to her channel, you can scroll through the different hairstyles.

I also like ClassicRetroGlamour (above), except she just makes me wish I was a blonde babe. I tried something similar to the Marilyn Monroe hair, and while I didn’t look anything like Marilyn (I have long black hair), it was still really prettyyyy!

Guess what I wanna try next? Finger waves! They’re pretty much the most glamorous thing ever.

They’re called finger waves because they’re literally the indentation from someone’s fingers in your incredibly-producted hair as they are grabbing your skull and pulling the hair into waves with a comb. It’s not always done that way, though – sounds way too intense for me. This girl seems to have a lazy enough shortcut for me.

The important thing is to experiment. Maybe you’ll try one type of curl setting and end up looking like Lionel Richie in the morning. S’okay. Hopefully, you’ll look more like Nicole Richie, only with meat on your bones and a vintage hairstyle, and without Nicole Richie’s face.

* I can’t be fully sure this statement is true