Ask Miss Caro-chan: Lolitas Without Bangs

As always, I've been neglecting my Ask Miss Caro-chan feature. I've been answering questions over on my formspring, but I haven't really be going into in dept blog posts about some of the questions, even though I've been getting a lot of really good ones that have made me want to blog about them! Well, maybe one day I'll go through my backlog of questions and make really awesome blog posts answering them, but until then, here's a pretty relevant question from E. Etherington who asks:

Dear Miss Caro-chan,

I refuse to wear bangs! I have have hand bangs my entire young life, and by highschool I was sick of them. I now have a head of beautiful, long, unlayered hair. I love my hair, and it is probably my favorite part of me. :)

However, I have been searching endlessly for Lolita hairstyles for people without bangs. I am well-versed in historical hair coiffures, which is where I draw a lot of my inspiration, but I was wondering if you knew any photos, tutorials, or looks that give a Lolita look to someone without bangs.
Plus, I feel that bang-less hairstyles are much more elegant, and give a more mature look to Lolita that some people may desire. I am interested on your opinion of this!

I have to admit, I was bangless for a very long time! When I was really little I used to have bangs and I used to hate them. Well, not actually the bangs themselves, it was the hair cutting that I used to hate! I was quite little and I was pretty terrified of the big pair of scissors my mom used to use to cut my bangs, the cold feel of them against my forehead as she tried to get my bangs nice and straight, and the awful sssshhhhhhhhnip noise as she cut them. After a few times of that I would only let my hair be cut at a salon by a trained professional with teeny tiny scissors. Sometime in second grade I put my foot down and decided "No more bangs! Ever!", well, until about 4 years ago.

But, the question from E wasn't "Dear Caro-chan: How completely afraid of certain hairstyles are you? What's the scariest hair style?" so I wont go into more blood-curdling details about the irrational fear of bangs I had when I was 5 and instead just say that there are indeed different ways of styling bangless hair in the Lolita world! It sometimes take some digging around but you can often find pictures of girls without bangs among the various Lolita mooks out there.

The braided bangs

A cute little french braid along your hair line is a good style choice for the bangless, either in a longer length to almost create faux bangs, or tight against your head to just add some interest to your hair. The braided bang creates a very elegant look that is quite suited for Classic Lolita. There are tons of tutorials for this hairstyle on youtube, search around and pick the one that you think will suit you best and try it out!

Side swept-bangs and the side part.

Definitely the most popular bangless Lolita hairstyle! Simply part your hair a little to the left or the right and either pin it, tuck it, or just leave it free. Some of these pictures might actually be side-swept bangs, instead of long straight hair, because it's sometimes nearly impossible to tell the difference between perfect side-swept bangs and a nice side part. This is an elegant looking hair style that can be used with any of the Lolita styles, as the pictures above show, Gothic, Classic, and Sweet Lolita all go great with the side part.

Fake bangs

And I don't mean a pair of clip on bangs! I'm talking about the extreme side part. Where you take a chunk of hair from one side of your head and basically just pin it to the opposite side so that it gives a bangs-esque shape to your face. I think this is a cute look, like a grownup version of bangs, and is good for when you want the shape of bangs, but you're not going to cut your hair just for them, but I imagine that it's a bit difficult to get this style to stay in place for a long period of time.

The plain old down the middle part

A very natural looking and girly way to part your hair. It's a little younger and a little less formal looking than the side part, but is cute just the same and goes very nicely with just about any Lolita style.

Pulled back

Another simple look for the bangless. I think that this is quite possibly one of the youngest bangless looks you can do and is very nicely suited for Sweet Lolita.

Headwear Without Bangs

The biggest downside to not having bangs is always being afraid that your particular choice of headwear just isn't appropriate without bangs. I really do think that anything that works with bangs can work without bangs, but sometimes hair needs to be styled a certain way to make it work. As you can see from the examples above there is a wide variety of different Lolita head pieces being worn, from bonnets, to big bows, to tiny bows, to mini hats, to crowns, to flower corsages, and they all look very nice. Because of all the different ways to style bangless hair, you might want to experiment a bit to decide which one works for you.

For me, it's hard to say that bangless hair styles are always more mature and elegant than hair styles with bangs, but they definitely can be much more mature and elegant than plain old blunt, eyeball length bangs. But, on the flipside, there are ways to style your hair that can look just as youthful, and even more so, than bangs.

I do definitely think that bangless hair styles are often overlooked or taken for granted in Lolita and should definitely not be mandatory for the style. With bangs, you pretty much decide on what look you want and cut your bangs to suit that, then they're going to be that way for at least a couple months until they grow out long enough to cut them again, but without bangs, you can change your look day by day. One day pulling them back into perfectly curled pig tails for a sweet and girlish look, the next parting them on the side with a gentle wave for a natural and mature look.

What about the rest of you? Bangs or no bangs with Lolita? Did you decide to take the plunge one way or another specifically for Lolita? Do you have any bangless Lolita hairstyles of your own to share? Personally, I did get bangs specifically for Lolita. For a while I was nervous about getting them because I was afraid it would make my face look too wide (And, I was determined to stick to the "Never again!" promise I made with I was 7) so I had lots of layers around my face in a sort of half-bang for a year before I finally took the plunge and just got regular blunt bangs. Now that I have bangs though, I really do love them, except for when I'm too lazy to trim them and they grow too long and they drive me crazy.