Cake It On!: Tuesday Tip #6

Victory Rolls

In keeping with the theme of my last Cake It On! party, I thought I'd make today's tip all about Victory Rolls. I was also inspired by the River Pageant on Sunday which was in Battersea Park to celebrate the Jubilee - there were so many pop-up Victory Roll hair salons there and we even had the fantastic Angel Adoree of The Vintage Patisserie in our WI tent. (She's been tagged on my blog a few times so check out the other posts).
The hairstyle is so popular that girls queued for an hour in the rain, just to have this up-do done by Angel and her lovely assistants.

Of course, the pageant was to celebrate the Queens Coronation 60 years ago in 1952 so it may seem strange that Victory Rolls featured so prominently at a 50's bash. However they are associated with the rockabilly music movement from the 1950's, despite their WWII origins, and are still popular today.

According to most accounts, the rolls were named after a maneuvre of a WWII fighter jet and were a fashionable way to keep women's hair off their faces when they started working in the factories etc. They were also a way to express women's style, femininity and ostentatiousness when clothing had become rationed and simplistic. (Similar to the complex hairstyles of the Victorian women who were making up for the fact they were unable to wear make-up).
I love Victory Rolls so much as they really are a statement and product of that particular zeitgeist and what's more they're really easy to do when you have the hang of them, and weirdly addictive!
So my tips are simple. First, you have to curl your hair and it really doesn't matter which direction you curl it in, as long as it's curled. You can do it however you like: tongs, heated rollers, whatever works for you. But for authentic curls which literally last until you wash your hair again, I suggest foam rollers:

To get a decent 'set' which is actually less hassle, I put curl balm on my hair (which was about 89p from Superdrug) then I spray with my favourite setting lotion (see my previous post on that - it's fabulous stuff!). Because setting lotion has alcohol in it, after you spray your hair it won't be long before it suddenly feels about 80% dry. That's when you put it in rollers and forget about it.
Now I need my curls to really last and I can't sleep on rollers, so what I tend to do is take the rollers out before bed and kirby grip the curls flat to my head - that's a flat pin-curl. If you put a bandana over your head you can sleep comfortably, and that is exactly why the bandana look was popular in the 40's and 50's...to hide the pincurls during the day! (See Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice to see how effective that is.) If I have a vintage event on a weekday evening, I'll literally keep the curls in all day, under a scarf - see my previous post on that too :)
Once you take the curls out you'll look like this:

The rest of the style simply involves taking sections of your hair from your parting to right behind your ear and first brushing it out a bit. Then, back-comb or 'tease' (as the Americans say) the inner part of the chunk of hair and then you'll find it basically rolls over on its own fairly easily. Then, when you're happy with its position you can use bobby pins/kirby grips to keep them in place, and they'll really hold because of the teased hair. Do have hairspray and a brush handy to neaten up the front and smooth the baby hairs too. And when you get frustrated with it, try to remember that apparently there were no kirby grips back then so the women used to use pipecleaners to do their styles! I have no idea how...
Once you know how to roll you'll suddenly find yourself doing all sorts of styles.