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.

Split Color Wigs

One of the big fads in the Lolita communities at the moment is 2 color split wigs or dye jobs, which, if you haven't guessed, is an almost Cruella Deville styled dye job often found in dual candy colors. This style of dye has been around for years in the Western goth scene and has been seen fairly frequently in the Gothic & Lolita Bibles for the past few years, but it is just now getting popular in the Lolita scene here due to a few Western indie shops selling split color wigs for a reasonable price.

There are a few places you can get hold of wigs like this outside of Japan, you can order from either MintyMix or Cosplay Wigs USA. Both shops have a few different color options and are around $50 for one wig. Or, if you are daring, you can try to create your own split wig with this tutorial. Keep in mind that you're not exactly going to save a ton of money making your own split wig, since you're going to have to buy 2 wigs to cut up and due to the way you cut them you are only going to be able to get one wig out of the two. The upside to making your own is you have complete control over the colors.

Two different kinds of split wigs from indie shops, Cosplay Wigs USA on the left, MintyMix on the right.

If you're looking for some split color inspiration, you can find a few examples in various Gothic & Lolita Bibles, below are some that I stumbled across. This hairstyle works well with any Lolita style, blond and black working well with Gothic, pastel duos work well with Sweet Lolita, and natural duos work well with pretty much any style.

Ever since I saw the tutorial on how to make these I have been looking at my own small wig collection trying to decide whether or not I want to sacrifice two of my three wigs to make a split color wig. I eventually decided on sacrificing my pink wig and buying a purple wig to split with it. I'm still waiting for the purple wig to come to see if it's the right shade of purple, and if it is, hopefully I'll get some pictures of the process up! Why a purple and pink wig when pink and black or black and white or any other number of color combos would be much more suited to me and my wardrobe? Well, let's just say I have plans for something ridiculously over-the-top that should be ready by Anime Boston this year. Speaking of Anime Boston, I just paid for my Artist Alley table : 3 but more about that some other time.

Lolita Hairstyles: Ode to the Spiral Curl

One of my favorite Lolita hairstyles is the spiral curl, or ringlet. It's used to be one of Lolita's must have looks, but now it's nearly never seen. Which is understandable, it is very hard to pull off without looking like a Little Bo Peep cartoon and it's even harder to maintain if you do pull it off. One little slip-up and you can end up pulling your perfect curls apart never to be able to get them back together without busting out the curling iron yet again.

I can't really decide what I love most about the look, perhaps because it is a perfect example of the porcelain doll aspect of the Lolita aesthetic, or the wave of nostalgia I have whenever I see them, reminding me of a time when Lolita was still new to me and I would have given anything to get my hair to behave in such a manner.

The most classic spiral curl for Lolitas is the tight, highly styled spiral curl. These are typically perfect looking. Shiny strips of perfectly flattened hair curled into an impeccable spiral and held that way with lots and lots of hair spray. Or, probably more often than not, a very well cared for wig. This is the most "doll like" of the spiral curl, for it's perfect and near artificial look. Often seen down, but also in a pair of pigtails, this style is more suited for Classic Lolita, Gothic Lolita, or any kind of old school style.

Another variation on these curls is the "form all the curls into big curls". In which, you guessed it, you carefully form all the curls into a couple big curls. You most often see this with 2 big curls, either in ponytails or worn down with one across each shoulder, but you can have more if you feel like it. This kind of spiral curl can easily go with any of the Lolita sub-styles and makes a good, toned down alternative, for the big huge pigtails that are so prevalent in Sweet Lolita. It's much lighter on maintenance too. So long as your hair can hold a curl you need not worry too much about this getting stuck on long fingernails, buttons, headbands, or anything else that might get too close to your head as you can easily reform the curl so long as it still has some spring back in it.

One other variation is to soften up the curls a bit by going easy on the hair spray and fluffing them with your fingers. It creates a much softer and fluffier curl that is also relatively light on maintenance, since you can easily hide any accidental unravelings in the volume of the hair. This is another variation that can easily go with any of the sub-styles. As seen in the pictures below, it's perfect for hair that's too short for the other versions of the spiral curl.

How do you get these perfect curls you ask? There are a number of ways, the easiest is definitely to get a wig or a pair of clip-in extensions. You don't have to spend a couple hours carefully balancing a hot curling iron over your head to get those hard-to-reach spots, all you have to do is tuck your real hair up and pop on a wig. These curls are also pretty much never going to go flat, they'll always remain springy and perky.

Bodyline sells a rather nice looking spiral curl wig in a variety of colors. I'm seriously considering getting the reddish brown one!

You can also style your own hair by using a very thin curling iron and a whole lot of hairspray. I can't tell you the best thing to do for your type of hair, but typically what you want to do is start off with a very thin curling iron, work with small sections of hair, hold the iron vertically and gently shake the curls off of it once they are set, then spray it with hair spray. There are tons of tutorials and videos about this online for lots of different kinds of hair, so look around and experiment to find the best one for you and your hair!

I know these curls are either a love-it-or-hate-it sort of thing, but I can't help loving them, I have to admit I even like the ultra-shiny fake looking ones. But what do you think? Is it a trend you wish would come back? Or do you cringe every time you see them?

Ask Miss Caro-chan: Lolita Styles for Short Hair & A Peek At What I've Been Up To.

Today's Ask Miss Caro-chan comes from Enichan. She asks:

Hi! I was wondering if you had any tips for lolitas with short hair. I recently got my hair cut pretty damn short, and while it kind of works as is to create a more androgynous look, I'd like to have a few more options. I just can't really think of much to do with it.

This is not exactly a subject I am well versed on, as my hair is very long, but I'll do my best! Well, first of all, there is the obvious and nearly limitless choice of wigs and hair clips. With short hair it wouldn't be hard to tuck your hair under a wig cap and plop down the wig of your choice on top of your head. This way you have near limitless color options and styles that you really don't have to worry about. If your hair is long enough to pull into pigtails or a ponytail, you could skip the full wig and just buy a ponytail fall in a color to match you hair and have instant long hair in perfect curls that you can take off whenever you want. Of course, there are down sides to wigs, nice ones can be expensive, they can be a pain to store, they get hot, and maybe you just don't want to deal with actually having to wear one. In that case, there are still many things you can do with your own hair.

If your hair is very short, too short to style or even pull together into a tiny tuft of a pigtail, your best option is to decorate! Wear a head piece, add some clips to your hair, or even consider wearing a full-sized hat. A cute beret perched at an angle above a pixie cut looks adorable! Very short hair cuts can look really cute with Lolita. Here's a post on EGL of girls showing off their short hair cuts with their frills.

If you have slightly longer hair you have even more options. Personally, I think that one of the cutest styles to wear with Lolita is the bob. If you have a bob you don't even need to consider styling it, just put on your favorite hair bow and fluff it up a little bit and you've got perfect hair! If your hair is long enough to style you could always do a sort of mini updo, keep your bangs straight (assuming you have bangs!) and curl the rest of your hair so it's nice and poodley and then pin it up and add some accessories to it.

Because many Lolitas are bit more comfortable and confident doing something if the Bibles have proved that it can be done, here's a selection of short hair styles from the Gothic & Lolita Bibles that are used in a variety of different kinds of Lolita.

If you want something a little different, try a look from the past, like pin curls. They might take some practice doing, and you might even need a friend to help you, but they give beautiful results, especially with very short hair. Here's a great tutorial on how to do them on short hair. If you are interested in other kinds of curls for short hair, check out finger waves, they were a hair style popular in the 20's and 30's.

The long waves are finger waves. The curls around her ears are most likely pin curls.


A few more examples of short hair from the 1920's.

There are lots of different styles a Lolita with short hair can pull off, you just have to be willing to experiment a bit to find which one matches your style perfectly!

If you're wondering why I've been so quite in March, it's because I've been working on projects. Projects of the bonnet (and hair clips and jewelry!) sort. I plan to get an Etsy shop up and running sometime very soon, hopefully within days. So be on the look out for that!

A sneak peek of a couple of the bonnets I have made.